The Mysterious & Supernatural in Jack Spicer's Poetry

P.J. Worsfold, 4/10/2006

Jack Spicer's poetic aim was to explore and to articulate what he termed 'the real'. In meeting this poetic end, Spicer often turned to images and themes mysterious and supernatural in nature. To the unaccustomed reader, this may seem contradictory, since if one were looking to describe things as really they are, one would expect a language of clarity and precision to be most effective. This apparent contradiction is only one of many that make Spicer's work so intriguing, the mysterious and the supernatural are precisely the part of the real that Spicer was interested in exploring. Like Nietzsche before him, Spicer believed that the world as we see it is largely a construct of arbitrary self-imposed rules that both control us and skew the way we perceive reality. For Spicer, language was both an example of such a rule and a means for breaking such rules. While some poets, and certainly much public thought on poetry, remains concerned with metaphysical expression, Spicer's work pushed forward to define the world, rather than refine someone else's descriptions of it. His approach stems from a variety of linguistic, poetic, and worldly beliefs. However, it is the place where Spicer's efforts to reopen language, through the serial poem, intersects with his mysterious and supernatural imagery that is particularly telling of his poetic concerns.

Before discussing Spicer's work, it will be useful to put forth a bit of background information on this poet who, only since the late-1970s, has come to the attention of mainstream poetics (Gizzi xi). Jack Spicer was born on January 30, 1925 in Los Angeles, California and he died, from alcoholism, on August 17, 1965 in San Francisco. Between the years of 1945 and 1955, Spicer studied and worked at the University of California Berkley in the fields of linguistics researcher and poetics. He is perhaps best known as a member of the Berkeley Renaissance, a poetry group he formed in 1946 with his friends, and fellow poets, Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser. Spicer, Duncan, Blaser and the other poets that made up the Berkeley Renaissance sought to reaffirm the value of poetry as a tool for truthful and relevant commentary in a modern society. The name that these three men gave their group should not be overlooked, as it is very telling of their poetic aim; theirs was truly a renaissance in the classical sense.

Today, the term renaissance is often limited to describing a particular aesthetic of 15th century Italy. However, the essence of the Italian Renaissance and what made the movement's fidelity to nature and aesthetic beauty possible, was the integration of mathematics and science into art. This quality was not lost on the members of the Berkeley Renaissance (Ellingham and Killian 79) and once one accounts for the uncanny in Spicer's language, his work becomes a rational, rule based effort to order and describe a true sense of reality. Like an Italian Renaissance painter, Spicer's process and work is supported by a set of principles to which any student of the natural sciences could relate.

Not only in his approach to work, but in his very being, Spicer was an outsider and a contradiction to whichever group one might like to lump him with. He was openly gay in a time of rampant homophobia, yet as Blaser notes, "his contempt for "liberalism" was profound" (Gizzi xii). Spicer "lived with a child's awkwardness both emotionally and physically" (xii) furthermore, he was a notorious drinker who cultivated a life-long interest in baseball. A poet who disdained publishing, he alienated himself from many of his poetic peers including Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Frank O'Hara (xi). Ellingham notes that, "Spicer struggled from outcast positions for most of his career, rejecting systematically all acceptance that came his way" (xi).

Not only was Spicer aware that he was different than most, some of his actions suggest that he derived a pleasure in his otherness. The beat poet Ron Loewinsohn recalls a meeting between the black activist and writer, LeRoi Jones, who would later be known as Amiri Baraka, and Spicer, who was often known for his anti-Semitic and racist remarks. While everyone around the two men expected sparks to fly, Spicer befriended Jones and the two got along well. Loewinsohn comments, "Jack was always looking to do the things you were not expecting" (Ellingham and Killian 210). In spite of his drinking, poor personal hygiene, sexuality, and generally strange manner, toward the end of his life, the poetry world increasingly began to recognize Spicer's talent. Among other things, this recognition involved an invitation to speak at the Vancouver Poetry Conference in June of 1965 as well as an invitation to teach at Simon Fraser University; however, due to his premature death, he was unable to realize the latter. An irony of Spicer's existence on the margins, was his inclusion in Donald Allen's The New American Poetry 1945-1960, a now classic poetry anthology. Regarding the inclusion, Blaser recalls how Spicer then "reveled in his status as both an insider and an outsider" (xiii).

Spicer's concept of open and closed language was a central motivation for his work. It is a notion that both speaks to his rational aim and opens the door for the mysterious and supernatural to enter his poetry. Spicer's efforts were grounded in the way he saw language and with the unsettling potential that he saw in language to shape our perceptions of the real or known world. To Spicer, when meanings in the words of a language become static, that language becomes closed and is no longer able to accurately express the events of the present. Spicer argues that when a "public language has closed itself in order to hold meaning, it becomes less than the composition of meaning. It stops and relegates both the language and its hold on the "real" to the past" (Blaser 275). In its unchanging nature, a closed language makes finite, the mind's infinite capacity and limits the extent of experience to that which we already now and have attached meaning to. This homogeneous stagnation "leaves entire realms unacknowledged" (280) and new levels of clarity and understanding become "unknown, unimagined, (and) unthought" (280).

In his work, Spicer railed against the closing of language, offering instead a means to invigorate it and to ensure its continued relevance. Spicer's open model of language takes a heterogenic approach based on a continuous dialectic of meaning. Whereas in a closed language, meanings and consequently the known are fixed values, in an open model, language is adapted and re-adapted to fit a user's particular time and experience. The reopening of language is thus a continual illustration of the real and a vital aspect of Spicer's poetic aim. To illustrate this belief Spicer said, "a poet is a time mechanic, not an embalmer… objects, words must be led across time not preserved against it" (309).

Ironically, Spicer's approach to language also facilitates and necessitates the uncanny in his work. Once one accepts a language intended to describe what lies beyond our understanding; one must also accept the introduction of mystery. However, the reader must realize that Spicer's is not mystery for an aesthetic sense, but mystery as an accurate description of somewhere the reader has never been before; somewhere that is actually mysterious. Finally, in exploring the realms beyond our understanding, we naturally integrate the inhabitants of such places into our reality; Spicer suggests, "a reopened language lets the unknown, the Other, the outside in again as a voice in the language" (276).

In the poem, Language Spicer expresses both the mystery and scope of the world he was trying to define and the struggles we must endure to understand it. He writes,

But dream is not enough. We waking hear the call of the
In-
Visible world
Not seen. Hinted at only. By some vorpals, some sea-lions,
some scraggs.
Almost too big to get used to, its dimensions amaze us, who are
blind to Whatever
Is rising and falling beneath us.
(The Collected Works of Jack Spicer 223-224)

As the first line of this selection suggests, the place Spicer is describing is not from a dream, but part of the real. In this selection, Spicer is slowly homing in on a particular subject, an "In- / Visible world" that osculates in and out of view as we struggle to understand it. Like a mariner looking to sea, Spicer's gaze tries to accumulate into the real that which sits just past its boundaries, a subject "hinted at only" and shrouded in mystery. The reader gets a view of a place that, due to its location at the fringe of an ever-expanding universe, is necessarily uncertain and supernatural and a home to an assortment of strange creatures. Spicer's imagery is consistent with what one might see upon the first step in an effort to explore a vast space. As with any first step in a long journey, the view at the end is difficult to make out. I wonder if Spicer's imagery would have gotten any clearer had he lived to be an old man.

Spicer sought to re-contextualize poetry, with regards to both its writing and reading. Rather than creating reflections of the known, in a static discourse, which by originating from an incomplete or veiled worldview are untrue, Spicer believed, "poetry (was) necessary to the composition or knowledge of the "real"" (271) and he tried to write poetry that was progressive. Spicer argued that, whereas the traditional reading of a poem is concerned with the analysis of a singular creation, the act of reading a poem was actually an exchange and a part of a continuing communication. Katz, who may need to visit more 'English Departments', suggests that in his theories Spicer "'admonishes' against… the sort of expressive formalism of the 'English Department' which demarcates, isolates and seals literary works into coherent, self-contained units, each with a meaning, problem or emotion" (Katz 85). To Spicer, reading a poem is not about revisiting someone's past observations, it is in the "angel of the work" (Blaser 273) that relays an experience or message from one person to another. With every successful exchange, the dialectic continues, as the poet's words are reborn and reconstituted to fit the moment of their reading. In this sense, a poet transcends time.

When interpreting Spicer's work, it is difficult to avoid seeking out the symbolic or allegorical. Images of "vorpals" and "scraggs" almost demand to be abstractions of something else; perhaps a horribly traumatic event of the writer's past. However, one must remember the importance Spicer placed on depicting the real. Rather than a poetics that is concerned with establishing a self-contained microcosm, Spicer's concern in both the act of writing poetry and in the poems themselves is with the exploration and tracking of the heterogeneous and ever-expanding universe that we live in. Spicer called his work serial poetry.

The serial poem is an excellent example of open language in practice. It is a modular form that as an individual piece, or in a collection resists any form of encompassment or summation. Serial poetry is essentially and deliberately incomplete because it is always expanding out with the flow of time. In its heterodoxy and in its progression the serial poem is ideally suited toward documenting the real. Yet, as with Spicer's concept of open language, in being so ideally suited to his description of the real, the serial poem also opens door for the 'Other'.

Spicer referred to his method of writing as dictation, a technique that he claimed to have borrowed from Yeats, who in turn took it from Blake (Blaser 308). Similar to a form of possession, with this method of writing, Spicer believed that the poet is essentially a receiver who, in his poetry, is channeling messages from the beyond. (Katz 85) Relating dictation to Olson's theory of projective verse Spicer said, "instead of the poet being a beautiful machine which manufactured the current for itself, did everything for itself, almost a perpetual motion machine, of emotion, until the poet's heart broke… there was something from the outside coming in" (Blaser 273). Spicer also compared this method of writing to acting as a radio receiving "Martian" transmissions from outer space (Gizzi 2). While this is a memorable metaphor, with its sensational effect, it runs the risk of detracting from Spicer's credibility. It is important to understand that Spicer's ideas are derived from his expert knowledge of linguistics and that the colloquial vocabulary he chooses to express himself with was a conscious choice (3) and not the result of a lacking intellect.

While most would consider the act of writing poetry to be a solitary and personal experience, Spicer's method of writing involved a collaborative effort, one that transcended time and reality as we understand it. This is indeed a strange technique and it serves as an excellent example of how Spicer used the mysterious and supernatural to achieve his poetic aims. Blaser observes that, "the entrance of strangeness to (Spicer's) work takes many forms - most obviously in the ghosts," (Blaser 281) and it is my contention that such characters are necessary, as they are the imagery that properly expresses Spicer's intention. The ghosts set the stage or act as ambiance to Spicer's ambition, helping the reader acclimatize to the realm of thought that Spicer wishes to enter. I concur with Blaser when he goes on to say that what the ghosts provide "is a proposal of the wildness and of meaning - a lost and found, a going and coming" (281).

Using a baseball metaphor to describe his dictation style of writing, Spicer once commented, "that the poet is more like a catcher, but likes to believe he's a pitcher" (307). In the third poem of the series, Four Poems for The St. Louis Sporting News, Spicer appears to expand on this metaphor with the help from a few ghosts. He writes,

Pitchers are obviously not human. They have the ghosts of
dead people in them. You wait there while they glower, put
their hands to their mouths, fidget like puppets, while
you're waiting to catch the ball.
You give them signs. They usually ignore them. A fast outside
curve. High, naturally. And scientifically impossible.
Where the batter either strikes out of he doesn't. You either
catch it or you don't. You had called for an inside fast ball.
The runners on base either advance of they don't
(The Collected Works of Jack Spicer 257)

In this passage, Spicer describes the communicative exchange he sees taking place between the pitcher, the otherworldly source of his poetry, and himself, the poet. In a broader sense however, by describing the process by which meaning is transferred through time by a progression of individual experience, this poem seems to conceptually unite Spicer's belief on the reopening of language with his dictation technique. Spicer's supernatural baseball game is a very effective description of how he saw poetry and language working. As we stand ready to receive the ghost-like messages of those who have gone before us, we "give them signs" and we do our best to interpret and anticipate the upcoming communication. Then, once the 'ball' comes our way, we "either catch it or (we) don't" and the meaning is transferred into our own fleeting present moment or sent off somewhere else. In any case, Spicer's poems continue, as do our own experiences.

In this discussion, I have suggested that Spicer's use of the mysterious and supernatural in his poetry was a utilitarian or logical choice. Spicer needed to create for the reader a sense of departure from the norm in order to facilitate the optimum conditions for his expression and the reader's comprehension. For this purpose, ghosts and the mysterious simply fit the bill. On this sense of departure Blaser notes, "it informs the whole of Jack's work. It is fundamental to our thought and experience and Jack's effort is a performance and interrogation of it" (298). Earlier in this passage, Blaser describes Spicer's approach by referencing a line written by Mallarmé where he suggests nothingness is "not an end but a point of departure" (298). It was certainly Spicer's comfort of being on the margins and looking out to nothingness that gave him his unique insight. However, given the complexity of Spicer's ideas I am left wondering whether Spicer's efforts to explore the real were intended for his benefit of for that of his readers. Moreover, if he was writing to an audience, did he feel that the need to articulate things exactly superseded the need to communicate clearly to his readers? In short, how much did artistry affect the expression of the theoretical in Spicer's poetic aims?

One could take the position that Spicer's concerns would have been better served if he used language that was easier to understand and themes more concerned with linguistic meaning than Martians and ghosts. In creating a mood where the audience can be more open to accepting the strange, it may be that when the audience returns back to a normal state, Spicer's perspectives become easier to discount because they were the product of a heterogeneous state. However, to this argument, Spicer might suggest that it is not so much the reflection of the past that we should concern ourselves with, rather it is the fact that this moment of heterodoxy occurred and based on the experience, our sense of the real has evolved, if perhaps only slightly. Thus even in denial, the dialectic continues.

Works Citied

Blaser, Robin, ed. The Collected Works of Jack Spicer. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1975.

Clarkson, Ross. "Jack Spicer's Ghosts and the Immemorial Community." Mosaic Dec. 2001: 199-211.

Ellingham, Lewis and Kevin Killian. Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1998.

Gizzi, Peter, ed. The House that Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1998.

Katz, Daniel. "Jack Spicer's After Lorca: translation as decomposition." Textual Practice 18 (2004): 83-103.