Finding Aid to the Jack Spicer Papers, 1939-1982, bulk 1943-1965

Finding Aid written by Kevin Killian
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481
Fax: (510) 642-7589
Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
© 2007
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Finding Aid to the Jack Spicer Papers, 1939-1982, bulk 1943-1965

Collection Number: BANC MSS 2004/209

The Bancroft Library



University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley, California
Finding Aid Written By:
Kevin Killian
Date Completed:
February 2007
© 2007 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Collection Summary

Collection Title: Jack Spicer papers
Date (inclusive): 1939-1982,
Date (bulk): bulk 1943-1965
Collection Number: BANC MSS 2004/209
Creator : Spicer, Jack
Extent: Number of containers: 32 boxes, 1 oversize box Linear feet: 12.8 linear ft.
Repository: The Bancroft Library
Berkeley, California 94720-6000
Abstract: The Jack Spicer Papers, 1939-1982, document Spicer's career as a poet in the San Francisco Bay Area. Included are writings, correspondence, teaching materials, school work, personal papers, and materials relating to the literary magazine J. Spicer's creative works constitute the bulk of the collection and include poetry, plays, essays, short stories, and a novel. Correspondence is also significant, and includes both outgoing and incoming letters to writers such as Robin Blaser, Harold and Dora Dull, Robert Duncan, Lewis Ellingham, Landis Everson, Fran Herndon, Graham Mackintosh, and John Allan Ryan, among others. Also included are writings by other Bay Area writers, including Blaser, Duncan, and a significant amount by Stephen Jonas.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English
Physical Location: Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite and advance notice may be required for use. For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the library's online catalog.

Information for Researchers

Access

Collection is open for research.

Publication Rights

Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish or reproduce must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader. Copyright restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research and educational purposes.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], Jack Spicer Papers, BANC MSS 2004/209, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Alternate Forms Available

There are no alternate forms of this collection.

Related Collections

Jack Spicer papers, [1956]-1963, BANC MSS 99/94 c
Jack Spicer letters to Allan Joyce : New York and Boston, 1955-1956, BANC MSS 71/288 z
Jack Spicer letters to Myrsam H. Waxman, 1955-1956, BANC MSS 92/905 c
Jack Spicer papers, 1954-1964, BANC MSS 71/135 c
Smaller, yet still significant collections of Spicer material may be found in archives including the Poetry/Rare Books Collection at SUNY Buffalo; the Archive for New Poetry at UCSD, and Special Collections at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Spicer, Jack
Authors, American--20th century
Poets, American--20th century
Poets, American--California--San Francisco Bay Area
Spicer, Jack. Book of magazine verse
Spicer, Jack. Language
Spicer, Jack. Lament for the makers
Spicer, Jack. Homage to Creeley
Spicer, Jack. Admonitions

Administrative Information

Acquisition Information

The Jack Spicer Papers were given to The Bancroft Library by Holt V. Spicer on March 10, 2004.

Accruals

No additions are expected.

Processing Information

Processed by Kevin Killian and Jocelyn Saidenberg in 2005.

Biographical Information

John Lester Spicer was born on January 30, 1925, in Hollywood, California, where his parents managed a small hotel. He attended Hollywood and Fairfax High Schools from 1939 to 1943, then University of Redlands, California from 1943 to 1945.
After a brief period as a private detective (1943-1944), Spicer attended the University of California at Berkeley, from 1945 to 1950, receiving his B.A. in 1947 and his M.A. in 1950. As a young Berkeley student in the late 1940s, Spicer quickly met other gay male poets, including Robin Blaser, Robert Duncan, and Landis Everson. They began a lifelong association which Spicer half-seriously called The Berkeley Renaissance. His poetry of this period is elegiac, lyrical, magic-with little of the formal innovations developed later in the 1950s-and heavily homoerotic. He studied Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and German to prepare for a career in linguistics.
After graduating, Spicer found work as a teaching assistant at UC Berkeley, from 1947 to 1950 and 1952 to 1953. Politically an anarchist, Spicer found his academic career stalled after he refused to sign the Loyalty Oath, a provision of the Sloan-Levering Act that required all California state employees (including graduate teaching assistants at Berkeley) to swear loyalty to the United States. Just as problematic in terms of a career was his open and avowed homosexuality.
He left the Bay Area in 1950 to teach at the University of Minnesota from 1950 to 1952. He returned to the Bay Area as a lecturer in English at California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute) from 1953-55. During this period, he was a founder and part proprietor of 6 Gallery, San Francisco (1954-1956). Spicer once again left San Francisco to make a career as a poet in New York City where, with the aid of a Berkeley friend, the painter John Button, he encountered the poets of the so-called "New York School" and their circle, among them Frank O'Hara, Barbara Guest, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Joe LeSueur. Within months however, Spicer left New York to join the staff of the Rare Book Room at the Boston Public Library, though this position lasted less than a year.
In 1957, Spicer returned to the Bay Area. He worked once again as a lecturer at San Francisco State University, then as a researcher in the Linguistics Department at University of California, Berkeley from 1958 to 1964. A burst of activity ensued, and a new writing practice began, first with the imitations and translations of After Lorca (his first published book) which, he claimed, had been "dictated" to him, if not by Garcia Lorca, then by a mysterious unknown force he sometimes said might be "Martians." In this conceit he was greatly influenced by the French poet Jean Cocteau, whose 1950 surreal film Orphee explores the notion of a poetry given from beyond the grave, and by his poetic hero Yeats, whose experiments in automatic writing fascinated Spicer. These poems rarely came singly; with Robert Duncan, Spicer conceived of and developed the 'serial poem': a book-length progression of short poems which combine and re-order themselves into a whole in the same way that individual words and lines alter one another in a single poem. Spicer's finest early poems are the Imaginary Elegies, which became his contribution to Donald Allen's influential anthology The New American Poetry 1945-1960. "When I praise the sun or any bronze god derived from it," he wrote in the first elegy, "Don't think I wouldn't rather praise the very tall blond boy/ Who ate all of my potato-chips at the Red Lizard./ It's just that I won't see him when I open my eyes/ And I will see the sun."
In San Francisco, Spicer began teaching and young poets flocked to him. He wanted to develop a magic school of writing, a kreis modeled on the Georgekreis, the mystic cult of poetry and love organized by the modernist German poet Stefan George to preserve the memory of a dead boyfriend. In the last nine years of his short life, Jack Spicer completed a dozen books of poetry (and left incomplete at least half a dozen more), establishing a poetic tradition on the West Coast that ran parallel, yet counter, to the contemporaneous Beat movement. Unlike many of his poetic contemporaries, Spicer insisted that poets should avoid writing from their own experience, since the poet's subjectivity "got in the way of" the poem itself. His anarchist convictions led him to refuse copyright on his poetry since he believed that he was in no sense its owner, hardly even its creator. Spicer's own students came to include many of the finest poets, both gay and straight, working in San Francisco. He founded the magazine, J, in 1959, to publish their writing, alongside his own, and in 1964 oversaw another influential monthly journal, Open Space. Spicer died in San Francisco on August 17, 1965.
- Kevin Killian

Scope and Content of Collection

The Jack Spicer Papers, 1939-1982, document Spicer's career as a poet in the San Francisco Bay Area. Included are writings, correspondence, teaching materials, school work, personal papers, and materials relating to the literary magazine J. Spicer's creative works constitute the bulk of the collection and include poetry, plays, essays, short stories, and a novel. Correspondence is also significant, and includes both outgoing and incoming letters to writers such as Robin Blaser, Harold and Dora Dull, Robert Duncan, Lewis Ellingham, Landis Everson, Fran Herndon, Graham Mackintosh, and John Allan Ryan, among others. Also included are writings by other Bay Area writers, including Blaser, Duncan, and a significant amount by Stephen Jonas.
Comprising approximately thirty boxes of material, the collection includes manuscripts and typescripts for nearly every one of his major projects, with the exception of The Holy Grail (1962, published 1964), already in the Bancroft's possession and the manuscripts for his two final books, Language and Book of Magazine Verse, which are owned by Simon Fraser. In addition, there are papers representing nearly a dozen projects previously unknown, or thought lost in the general messiness that was Spicer's life. Among them are (each described in more depth later in this finding aid) Phases of the Moon, The Clocks, A New Poem, Helen: A Revision, A Birthday Poem for Jim (and James) Alexander, Dignity, For Major General Abner Doubleday, Spider Music," Ten Hokkus for Dorrie (part of an extensive project of "hokku," a Japanese poetry form in which Spicer took a great interest during 1959), For Harris," and Map Poems. Beyond these larger works there are hundreds of drafts of single poems known and unknown, doubling or perhaps tripling the number of poems written by Spicer. At least some of them Spicer himself apparently considered worthy of publication. In his lifetime he saw to press only a handful of books: After Lorca, Billy the Kid, Homage to Creeley, The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether, Lament for the Makers, The Holy Grail, and Language. Since his death an equal number have appeared in various small press editions.
Spicer's composition notebooks show us how he wrote his poems and, just as importantly, when. Many tangles in a hitherto mysterious career chronology straighten themselves out as one peruses the notebooks and discovers the procedural matrix/matrices. Apparently he could juggle many projects at once, and it was not unusual for him to be composing several serial poems at the same time. Following the evidence of these notebooks, we can now gather that The Red Wheelbarrow, for example, followed The Heads of the Town and Lament for the Makers--i.e., it can now be thought of as a 1960s poem, not a 1950s poem.
The typescript from which Lewis Ellingham and I prepared our edition of Spicer's incomplete, yet seminal detective novel (published in 1994 as The Tower of Babel) is here, and even more amazing, here are the seventeen notebooks in which Spicer wrote it out by hand, composing many of the poems from Admonitions, A Book of Music, and Billy the Kid sometimes literally in the margins. The manuscripts of many unpublished short stories and short plays (and for his major theatrical work, Troilus) shed new lights on Spicer not only as poet but as fiction writer and dramatist. Also included are Spicer's translations of Stefan George, and of the Beowulf poem (nearly 2,800 lines complete of the 3,182 line original).
The collection preserves the editorial work performed by Robin Blaser, Spicer's closest friend and literary executor, while preparing his landmark edition of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1975). Blaser spent the better part of ten years in assembling, editing, curating, and theorizing his late friend's work, and we can follow his intricate, multifaceted decisions right from the start. Blaser also preserved what he could of Spicer's incoming correspondence, and apparently solicited from Spicer's friends a good number of his original letters to them, so that in several cases we have both sides of the correspondence (and often enough the notebooks show us first and second drafts of letters now lost). To a biographer, or social historian, this alone is a great treasure, and the icing on the cake is that Spicer's letters are themselves often as "poetic" and/or poetically useful as his poems.
The sheer number of drafts and revisions available help give shading to Spicer's theories of "dictation" and show us that, at any rate, he didn't always practice the doctrine of "first thought best thought." Certainly he did not hesitate to revise, sometimes drastically, the texts of even his most famous poems: witness how the 1940s poem One Night Stand" gets whittled down to the tiny, minimalist Leda" ten years later.
The collection also contains Spicer's side of the editing of the influential mimeo magazine J, which he shared with Fran Herndon (SUNY Buffalo holds Fran Herndon's J materials). This includes, most notably, a large amount of poetry submitted to J by members of the larger Bay Area poetry scene of the late 1950s. Though much of it is dross, it gives a sense of the diamond-out-of-coal editorial inspirations that J represented. In the related subseries Works by Others, Spicer used large manila envelopes to hold what he labeled "O.P.P"- apparently, "Other People's Poetry" - in which he collected the very best poems of the poets in his circle, and includes many rare, unpublished, and previously unknown poems. This archive alone is a remarkable record of a particularly rich flowering in the postwar West Coast division of U.S. poetry. The larger cultural context in which Spicer wrote and thought and moved is preserved in multiple directions and elaborated with a scope unusual for any collection.
- Kevin Killian

 

Series 1 Correspondence 1943-1965

Physical Description: Boxes 1-4

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically by last name; miscellaneous outgoing and unidentified are at the end of the series.

Scope and Content Note

Contains correspondence both to and from Jack Spicer.
Box 1, Folder 1

Ackerman, Jerry 1951 June 7

Box 1, Folder 2

Adam, Helen undated

Box 1, Folder 3

Alexander, James- From Alexander to JS 1958-1961, undated

Box 1, Folder 4

Alexander, James- From JS to Alexander 1958-1962

Box 1, Folder 5

Allen, Donald 1951-1965

Box 1, Folder 6

Blaser, Robin - Blaser to JS, Blaser Ghost Writing for JS 1950-1962

Box 1, Folder 7

Blaser, Robin - From JS to Blaser 1950-1958

Box 1, Folder 8

Borregaard, Ebbe 1959

Box 1, Folder 9

Bottone, Gary R. 1951-1952

Box 1, Folder 10

Boyd, Bruce - Black Swan poem on verso 1953-1961

Box 1, Folder 11

Brodecky, Bill 1965

Box 1, Folder 12

Broderick, John 1956-1965

Box 1, Folder 13

Brower, David Ross 1963 September 4, 25

Box 1, Folder 14

Brown, William 1961 October 18

Box 1, Folder 15

Brucia, Frank A., D.D.S. 1959-1960

Box 1, Folder 16

Caen, Herb 1965

Box 1, Folder 17

Clark, John 1953-1955

Box 1, Folder 18

Cody, William F. 1958

Box 1, Folder 19

Creeley, Robert 1955 September 5, undated

Box 2, Folder 1

Davey, Frank 1965 July 8

Box 2, Folder 2

Deering, Richard A.- Spicer poem, " Uncle Blaze" on verso 1953-1956

Box 2, Folder 3

Dull, Dora 1959-1961

Box 2, Folder 4

Dull, Harold 1960-1961

Box 2, Folder 5

Duncan, Robert 1946-1951, undated

Box 2, Folder 6

Dundee, Richard 1965 February 26, undated

Box 2, Folder 7

Eigner, Larry 1959-1960

Box 2, Folder 8

Ellingham, Lewis 1961-1965

Box 2, Folder 9

Everson, Landis 1950-1951

Box 2, Folder 10

Field, Tom 1965 June 6

Box 2, Folder 11

Fitzgerald, Eileen M. 1960 December 22

Box 2, Folder 12

Fitzgerald, Russell 1957-1962

Box 2, Folder 13

Frederickson, Dave 1950 November 13

Box 2, Folder 14

Gasser, Roy 1964 February 4

Box 2, Folder 15

Herndon, Fran undated

Box 2, Folder 16

Herndon, Jim 1952, undated

Box 2, Folder 17

Hindmarch, Gladys 1965 June 30

Box 2, Folder 18

Hunt, Henry undated

Box 2, Folder 19

Jess 1961

Box 2, Folder 20

Johnson, Kay 1960 May 26

Box 2, Folder 21

Jonas, Stephen 1960-1965

Box 2, Folder 22

Jones, Leroi - Floating Bear 1961 May 27

Box 2, Folder 23

Joyce, Allen 1955-1956

Box 3, Folder 1

Kearny, Larry 1965 January 28

Box 3, Folder 2

King, Hayward 1956 July 23

Box 3, Folder 3

Kirby, Glory 1955-1956

Box 3, Folder 4

Kloth, Arthur 1950-1958

Box 3, Folder 5

Korte, Sister Mary Norbert 1965 July 17

Box 3, Folder 6

Kyger, Joanne undated

Box 3, Folder 7

Landers, Dale 1961

Box 3, Folder 8

Lennon, Bobby undated

Box 3, Folder 9

Levertov, Denise undated

Box 3, Folder 10

Low, Jo-Ann undated

Box 3, Folder 11

Mackintosh, Graham - Drawings undated

Box 3, Folder 12

Mackintosh, Graham 1954-1958, undated

Box 3, Folder 13

Martin, Link 1962 June 11, undated

Box 3, Folder 14

Miles, Josephine undated

Box 3, Folder 15

Mulholland, Kate 1949 June 17

Box 3, Folder 16

Olson, Charles 1958 January 28

Box 3, Folder 17

O'Neill, Hugh 1948 November 15, undated

Box 3, Folder 18

Parkinson, Thomas 1959 June 27

Box 3, Folder 19

Patterson, John 1948

Box 3, Folder 20

Persky, Stan 1959-1961, undated

Box 3, Folder 21

Pound, Ezra 1947

Box 3, Folder 22

Primack, Ron 1962 October 6

Box 3, Folder 23

Rice, Mary (Moore, Mary Rice) 1952-1957

Box 3, Folder 24

Roberts, James S. 1950 September 9, undated

Box 3, Folder 25

Rummonds, Richard 1954 August

Box 3, Folder 26

Ryan, John Allen- From Ryan to JS 1955-1957

Box 3, Folder 27

Ryan, John Allen- From JS to Ryan 1955-1956

Box 4, Folder 1

Sanzeveld, Jon 1965 May 16

Box 4, Folder 2

Schiff, Harris 1963

Box 4, Folder 3

Sedgewick, Gerald 1951

Box 4, Folder 4

Sherman, Allan 1946 January 15

Box 4, Folder 5

Spicer, Dorothy 1963, undated

Box 4, Folder 6

Stanley, George 1960-1961, undated

Box 4, Folder 7

Stannard, David 1945-1954

Box 4, Folder 8

Stegall, J. 1965 March 2, undated

Box 4, Folder 9

Steinmann, Bud 1952 December 7

Box 4, Folder 10

Summers, Tom 1943 October 31

Box 4, Folder 11

Tallman, Warren 1960-1965

Box 4, Folder 12

Tandey, Bob 1947 April 22

Box 4, Folder 13

University of British Columbia, Sonthoff, Helen 1965 January 15, 18

Box 4, Folder 14

Wallace 1959

Box 4, Folder 15

Webb, Jon Edgar 1960 July 22

Box 4, Folder 16

Welch, Lew 1965 June 23

Box 4, Folder 17

Wheeler, Dennis 1965 June 27

Box 4, Folder 18

Williams, Jonathan 1955-1958

Box 4, Folder 19

Wilson, Pat 1956 June 26

Box 4, Folder 20

Wixman, Myrsam 1955-1957

Box 4, Folder 21

Wolf, Patricia undated

Box 4, Folder 22

Miscellaneous Outgoing 1964-1965, undated

Box 4, Folder 23

Miscellaneous Correspondence with Publishers 1958-1965

Box 4, Folder 24

Miscellaneous with Surname A-W 1949-1962, undated

Box 4, Folder 25

Miscellaneous no Surname A-Z 1958, 1965, undated

Box 4, Folder 26

Miscellaneous Unidentified 1944-1964

Box 4, Folder 27

Miscellaneous Envelopes 1948-1964

Box 4, Folder 28

Miscellaneous Correspondence—copies 1965

 

Series 2 Writings 1946-1970, [1975], undated

Physical Description: Boxes 5-23

Arrangement

Arranged hierarchically.

Scope and Content Note

This series contains the writings of Jack Spicer, divided into seven subseries including poems, collected and serial poems, plays, prose, periodical publications, notebooks, and a novel The Tower of Babel.
 

2:1 Poems 1945-1964, undated

Physical Description: Boxes 5-6

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically by poem title or by first line.

Scope and Content Note

Consists of manuscripts and typescripts of Spicer's poems. If no title was given as part of the original work, the first line of the work is supplied as title.
Box 5, Folder 1

After the ocean, shattering with equinox 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 2

All Hallows Eve 1950-1953

Box 5, Folder 3

All sounds are soluble, all meanings merge undated [1940s]

Box 5, Folder 4

An Analysis of the Attractive Quality of Certain Irishfolk Formerly Pursued by Mr. W.H. and Mr. J.S. undated [1952?]

Box 5, Folder 5

An Answer to Jaime De Angulo 1947 April

Box 5, Folder 6

An Apocalypse for Three Voices 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 7

An Arcadia For Dick Brown 1946-1947

Box 5, Folder 8

And every boy and girl has a lover 1946-1947

Box 5, Folder 9

And the house. And the words. Are alone. undated

Box 5, Folder 10

Antique Scenes 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 11

Ars Poetica on verso - Breakfast, Realestate, Busfare" 1947-1948

Box 5, Folder 12

Art is so slow and long, and love so fast undated

Box 5, Folder 13

As a drop of blood, still open undated

Box 5, Folder 14

Ash Wednesday 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 15

At A Party 1940s

Box 5, Folder 16

At five o'clock the sea begins to writhe 1940s

Box 5, Folder 17

At Point Sur 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 18

At Slim Gordon's 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 19

Avenue of flames, paved with what fires 1946

Box 5, Folder 20

Babel 3 1956

Box 5, Folder 21

Ballad of the Surrealist's Daughter 1956

Carton 5, Folder 22

Bavaria 1942 (may pre-date 1959) 1959

Box 5, Folder 23

Berkeley in Spring 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 24

Berkeley Summer 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 25

Birds in the Bed 1947

Box 5, Folder 26

The Bridge Game 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 27

Butterflies 1951-1953

Box 5, Folder 28

Cantata 1958

Box 5, Folder 29

Canto for Ezra Pound 1946

Box 5, Folder 30

The Chess Game 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 31

Chinoiserie on verso " You're Eight Years Dead" undated

Box 5, Folder 32

Christmas Eve 1952 1952

Box 5, Folder 33

The City of Boston is filled with Frogheaded 1955-1956

Box 5, Folder 34

A Clean Break 1950s [early]

Box 5, Folder 35

The Clouds 1950s [late]

Box 5, Folder 36

Coffee-Time 1945

Box 5, Folder 37

Come Watch the Love Balloon 1945-1947

Box 5, Folder 38

Crabs - (Homage to Creeley) and The Poet Insists on Saying the Last Word 1959

Box 5, Folder 39

Crouched There 1959

Box 5, Folder 40

The Dancing Ape" ("To Robbie) 1949

Box 5, Folder 41

Dardanella 1949

Box 5, Folder 42

The Day Five Thousand Fish Died In The Charles River 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 43

Death undated

Box 5, Folder 44

A Description of Bakersfield undated

Box 5, Folder 45

A Dialogue between Intellect and Passion 1948-1950

Box 5, Folder 46

Each day passes into the next undated

Box 5, Folder 47

Eggshells undated

Box 5, Folder 48

Elegy for Kenneth Rexroth 1955-1957

Box 5, Folder 49

An Elemental Poem for Gene Wahl 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 50

Epilogue in Another Language 1950s [late]

Box 5, Folder 51

Episode of La Damoiselle Cacheresse 1962

Box 5, Folder 52

Epithalmiun 1959

Box 5, Folder 53

Eternuement 1955-1958

Box 5, Folder 54

Eucalyptus Leaves 1947 April

Box 5, Folder 55

First Fire Burns then Pain Becomes a Prayer 1940s

Box 5, Folder 56

Five Words for Joe Dunn on this Twenty Second Birthday 1956

Box 5, Folder 57

Four A.M. 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 58

The Fun House 1949

Box 5, Folder 59

Funeral March for a Dead Chess Player 1945

Box 5, Folder 60

Gandharian Grey, born of Maya, Mara, Maria (fragment) undated

Box 5, Folder 61

Ganymede with a broken arm undated

Box 5, Folder 62

A Girl's Song 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 63

Gloomy Cosmos undated

Box 5, Folder 64

Great Sun, So Ponderous undated

Box 5, Folder 65

Harold Dull 1950s [late]

Box 5, Folder 66

He Knew the World was Round (Post Colonial Poems) undated

Box 5, Folder 67

Hereafter 1946-1947

Box 5, Folder 68

A Heron for Mrs. Altrocchi 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 69

Hibernation 1955

Box 5, Folder 70

Homosexuality 1940s

Box 5, Folder 71

Hospital Scenes [1946]

Box 5, Folder 72

I entered your room with my armies, flanked and protected by my Gods 1940s [late]

Box 5, Folder 73

I saw a thunder-blossomed tree (Collected poems for J. Miles) 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 74

I went to a party (fragment) undated

Box 5, Folder 75

Indian Summer 1950 October

Box 5, Folder 76

The Inheritance - Palm Sunday 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 77

Is undated

Box 5, Folder 78

It little profits that an idle Spicer undated

Box 5, Folder 79

It was so cold a night, the very stars 1940s

Box 5, Folder 80

Jesus 1950s late

Box 5, Folder 81

Karma 1945-1946

Box 5, Folder 82

Lamp 1955-1958

Box 5, Folder 83

The laughing lady greets you as you walk 1949-1951

Box 5, Folder 84

A Lecture on Practical Aesthetics 1947-1948

Box 5, Folder 85

The limitless and stretching mountain of the damned undated

Box 5, Folder 86

Lives of the Philosophers: Diogenes 1949-1953

Box 5, Folder 87

" Love, Human or Divine" 1946-1947

Box 5, Folder 88

Lost Ulysses 1948

Box 6, Folder 1

Midnight at Bareass Beach 1953-1954

Box 6, Folder 2

Miss Dietrich stood with all those pelicans 1947-1948

Box 6, Folder 3

Mr. Footnote undated

Box 6, Folder 4

Mr. J. Josephson, on a Friday afternoon 1948-1949

Box 6, Folder 5

Nature of motives 1940s

Box 6, Folder 6

A New Testament 1945-1946

Box 6, Folder 7

A Night in Four Parts 1948-1949

Box 6, Folder 8

Nunc, In Pulvere Dormio 1946-1947

Box 6, Folder 9

The Oaks 1964

Box 6, Folder 10

October 1, 1962 1962 October 1

Box 6, Folder 11

On Falling into Your Eyes 1940s

Box 6, Folder 12

On Reading Last Year's Love Poems 1940s

Box 6, Folder 13

One Night Stand 1940s

Box 6, Folder 14

Orgy, Porgy, Pumpernickle, and Pie 1947 Summer

Box 6, Folder 15

Orpheus After Euridyce 1948

Box 6, Folder 16

Orpheus in Athens 1949

Box 6, Folder 17

Orpheus in Hell 1948-1949

Box 6, Folder 18

Orpheus' Song to Apollo 1948-1949

Box 6, Folder 19

The owl, that ugly singer (fragment) undated

Box 6, Folder 20

The pacing lion is disturbed with honey undated

Box 6, Folder 21

The pale placenta of the moon" on verso "Weltgeist expresses itself in nature as well as man undated

Box 6, Folder 22

Palm Sunday 1945-1946

Box 6, Folder 23

The Panther [1940s?]

Box 6, Folder 24

The peach-tree awkward as an April colt undated

Box 6, Folder 25

A Play of Five Tragedies 1964

Box 6, Folder 26

A Poem for a Restless Night 1940s

Box 6, Folder 27

A Poem for Nine Hours 1940s

Box 6, Folder 28

A Poem Perhaps for Singing undated

Box 6, Folder 29

A Poem Without a Single Bird In It 1956

Box 6, Folder 30

Poetry is action like a bird undated

Box 6, Folder 31

Portrait of an Artist 1950-1951

Box 6, Folder 32

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Landscape 1947

Box 6, Folder 33

A Postscript to the Berkeley Renaissance 1949-1950

Box 6, Folder 34

Pound and His Audience on verso - " Biographical Key" 1950-1952

Box 6, Folder 35

A Prayer for Pvt. Graham Mackintosh on Halloween 1953-1954

Box 6, Folder 36

A Protest Against a Dada Party in the Place on April 1, 1955 1955 April 1

Box 6, Folder 37

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy 1949

Box 6, Folder 38

Pudding 1962

Box 6, Folder 39

A pulse, a quiet understanding of breath undated

Box 6, Folder 40

The Rain undated

Box 6, Folder 41

Re A Poem For Josephine Miles undated

Box 6, Folder 42

Riddle Poem 1947

Box 6, Folder 43

A Second Train Song for Gary 1951-1952

Box 6, Folder 44

See V Flying round & (fragment) undated

Box 6, Folder 45

A Semperrealistic Poem for Jo Miles 1955-1956

Box 6, Folder 46

Simon's Restaurant 1945-1946

Box 6, Folder 47

A Sketch for George 1947-1948

Box 6, Folder 48

Slash from my face the flesh-mark undated

Box 6, Folder 49

The Slaying of the Jabberwock 1948-1949

Box 6, Folder 50

Socrates 1950s [early]

Box 6, Folder 51

Some Notes on Whitman 1955-1956

Box 6, Folder 52

" Stung, Hung, Dung, Bung" undated

Box 6, Folder 53

Sonnet for Gary 1950-1952

Box 6, Folder 54

The taste of amber is incredible undated

Box 6, Folder 55

There is a road somewhere 1946

Box 6, Folder 56

There is an inner nervousness in virgins 1945

Box 6, Folder 57

The Third Man 1940s

Box 6, Folder 58

" This angry maze of bone and blood, this body" (fragment) undated

Box 6, Folder 59

This White Moon Wine 1947-1948

Box 6, Folder 60

" This year is nine-months gone" undated

Box 6, Folder 61

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live 1947

Box 6, Folder 62

Tide-weaver, hunter, and planter [1947?]

Box 6, Folder 63

To a Certain Painter 1954-1955

Box 6, Folder 64

To Josephine Miles 1945-1946

Box 6, Folder 65

To the Semanticists 1945-1946

Box 6, Folder 66

Tomorrow weeps upon an aching breast of yesterday undated

Box 6, Folder 67

A Translation of George's Translation of Spleen" from Le Fleur de Mal (Steve George) 1940s

Box 6, Folder 68

Troy Poem 1949

Box 6, Folder 69

Twelve Days of Christmas undated

Box 6, Folder 70

Watching a TV Boxing Match in October 1950-1952

Box 6, Folder 71

We find the body difficult to speak 1940s

Box 6, Folder 72

The window is a sword 1953-1955

Box 6, Folder 73

With fifteen cents and that I could get a 1964

Box 6, Folder 74

Within the world of little shapes and sounds 1945-1946

Box 6, Folder 75

The world I felt this winter every hour 1940s

Box 6, Folder 76

Yes Virginia there is a post office on verso " Immortality" undated

Box 6, Folder 77

You are as far from me as China, as unreal 1940s

Box 6, Folder 78

You thought undated

Box 6, Folder 79

Miscellaneous undated

 

2:2 Books, Collected and Serial Poems 1948-1966, [1975]

Physical Description: Boxes 7-17

Arrangement

Arranged chronologically.

Scope and Content Note

This series contains serial poems and other book-length projects collected by Spicer or other editors who published Spicer's work posthumously.
Box 7, Folder 1

Collected Poems for Josephine Miles undated

Scope and Content Note

The notebook used for the facsimile edition is at the Mandeville Library at University of California, San Diego. Here we have holograph drafts of Ash Wednesday, Within the World, Avenues of Flame (which was excised from the manuscript), After the ocean, shattering with equinox, Wash up from the sea . . . To Josephine Miles, I saw 'a thunder-blossomed tree, and Karma. (partial manuscript)
Box 7, Folder 2

The Trojan Wars Renewed: A Capitulation or, The Dunkiad 1949

Scope and Content Note

Mock epic poem from 1950-3 period by Jack Spicer in two books and an invocation. Manuscript and typescript with Spicer's handwritten corrections.
Box 7, Folder 3-4

A Pook-Up for Rabbi Blasen, Boston, Masochistic 1956 September 10, 1970

Scope and Content Note

This was Spicer's attempt at cleaning up his "selected poems" as of autumn 1956. Includes Spicer's manuscript, and Blaser's typescript supplemented with a letter from Thomas Parkinson adding additional poems. A Pook-Up for Rabbi Blasen also contains typescripts of some pieces by Spicer, including A Play of Five Tragedies from 1964 and several autobiographical statements by Spicer, also from the 1960s.
Box 7, Folder 5

Playboys of the Last Frontier 1956

Scope and Content Note

Playboys was to be a collaborative history of the Berkeley Renaissance period written by Spicer and Robin Blaser in Boston in 1956. It was never finished and hardly started, but there are pieces of it to be found in several notebooks.
Box 7, Folder 6

Dialogue of Western and Eastern Poetry 1956

Box 7, Folder 7-15

Twelve Dead Geese by Eugene de Thassy 1955-1961, undated

Scope and Content Note

Autobiographical memoir/novel by the Hungarian émigré Eugene de Thassy, heavily edited by Jack Spicer (and his college friend, George Haimsohn, who might actually have written the book under de Thassy's dictation). The book was largely written in 1955-1956. It is difficult to ascertain how much of it is by Jack Spicer. The poems composed by one of the novel's main characters were written by Spicer, and there are some passages scattered in notebooks of Spicer writing or re-writing some of de Thassy's scenes. Blaser apparently thought the book was by George Haimsohn (see typescript of Twelve Dead Geese, A Paris Photo Album). Also included in the box are the many letters of direction from Eugene de Thassy (who often styles himself "Geno") to Spicer; the letters are helpful for understanding the relative contributions of all three men to this book. Contrary to Blaser's recollections, the book was indeed published under the title Twelve Dead Geese in 1960, long after Spicer had left Boston.
Box 7, Folder 7

Chapters 1-3 1955-1961

Box 7, Folder 8

Chapters 4-7 1955-1961

Box 7, Folder 9

Chapters 8, 9 1955-1961

Box 7, Folder 10

Chapter 9, Chapter 12, To The Reader 1955-1961

Box 7, Folder 11

Outline 1955-1961

Box 7, Folder 12

La Burumburu 1955-1961

Scope and Content Note

Includes Spicer's editorial comments.
Box 7, Folder 13

The Transfiguration of Twelve Very Dead Geese 1955-1961

Scope and Content Note

Includes Spicer's editorial comments.
Box 7, Folder 14

Correspondence - Eugene de Thassy 1955-1961

Box 7, Folder 15

Envelopes 1956

Box 7, Folder 16

Phases of the Moon 1955

Scope and Content Note

Only three poems in this brief cycle, "IInd Phase Of The Moon," "IIIrd Phase Of The Moon," "IVth Phase Of The Moon." (Was there a first? Not in the notebook nor in the table of contents for Selected Poems). These poems were written in New York in 1955. The typescripts appear in the Selected Poems collection (see below), as numbers 54, 55, and 56.
Box 8, Folder 1-6

Oliver Charming 1956

Scope and Content Note

Novel by Jack Spicer from the Boston period. In five notebooks, some of which might as well be grouped under the After Lorca notebooks, for they share some similar material.
Box 8, Folder 1

Notebook 1 1956

Scope and Content Note

  • Play: Pentheus and the Dancers (ten pages)
  • Poems: The Waves and An Answer to Jaime De Angulo (written in Berkeley)
  • Notes: for article on Emily Dickinson's poetry
  • Poem: Pound and his audience (written in Minneapolis)
  • Oliver Charming material: The Unvert Manifesto and Excerpts from Oliver Charmers Diary (through January 23, 1954)
  • Poems: Why not pretend to be in love with him? He isn't anything. and Ghost of eternal silences
  • Loose pages tucked in: " The Unvert Manifesto" (also in Spicer's handwriting) and Blaser's typescript of the excerpts from Oliver Charming which he used in his edition of Spicer's Collected Books of Jack Spicer.
Box 8, Folder 2

Notebook 2 1956

Scope and Content Note

  • Oliver Charming material, from January 23 through April 1, 1954: " 'I'd better take up the story here myself,' Thomas Wentworth Higginson said as he nervously rubbed one of the rings on his shining hand with his handkerchief." Note: the first page of this section will be found on the penultimate page of the notebook and begins: "A rather remarkable evening."
  • Poems: The Waves (draft) and Birdland, California (written backwards through from the rear of the notebook)
  • Drama material: from Sir Orfeo and from unidentified play laid in graveyard in the snow.
Box 8, Folder 3

Notebook 3 1956

Scope and Content Note

  • Quotation, attributed to Allen Joyce: "Robin Blaser eats shit."
  • Poems: A Night in Four Parts (written in Berkeley), The Waves (one of "Four Sea Pieces," Spicer writes, although the others haven't turned up yet--2, The Red Sea, 3, Song for Hart Crane, 4, The Pacific
  • Oliver Charming material: Poem, Song for the Great Mother.
  • Fragment: How can you keep a hard-on/ With that bad music playing/ And love was like to author of its lover.
  • Letter to John Ryan: I have fallen in love with Joe Dunn.
  • Fragments: including Orpheus in Athens
  • Oliver Charming material: April 1, 1954 through April 4, 1954, ending, "Once men get old enough, they learn how to keep quiet. All of you men are old enough."
  • Oliver Charming material: Poem, Song for the Great Mother (two drafts)
  • Poems (laid in loose): All Hallows Eve (written in Minneapolis), Imagine Lucifer
  • Prose passage that mixes in poetry: Hell (a different draft of the preceding)
Box 8, Folder 4

Notebook 4 1956

Scope and Content Note

  • Narcissus ( After Lorca)
  • Contents of Boston Newsletter No 1 (In Steve Jonas' hand)
  • Poem: A Poem for Robin Blaser, with first line Hogshit makes the world go round.
  • Fragment Letter to Joe [Dunn]
  • Oliver Charming material: The Angel Higginson, looking quite angry and absurd, flies into her face on his little wings and A Transcript of the Trial of Oliver Charming, held at the Black Cat, April 3, 1954 (five pages)
  • Poem: A Warning Against Tolerance From One Old Martian To Another
  • Fragment: A Horse's Skull
  • Poems: Goodnight, I want to kill myself and A Poem to the Reader of this Poem
  • Article: What to Do With the Boston Newsletter
  • With loose notebook pages, Poems: An Answer to a Jew, Song for Bird and Myself (with erased subtitle, A Memorial for His Death and Mine, For Allen Joyce), and Dialogue Between Intellect and Passion a/k/a Birds in the Bed (from Berkeley period)
Box 8, Folder 5

Notebook 5 1956

Scope and Content Note

  • Oliver Charming material: Orpheus was a poet who was in love with Eurydice . . .
  • Draft: A Poem to the Reader of this Poem
  • Poem: Autumn Leaves
  • Fragment: Four Poems For Audience
  • Poems: The Song Of The Bird In The Loins and If I had invented homosexuality
  • Fragment: Asterisks that greedy flower
  • Letter to Allen Joyce
  • Poem: Did you ever think what might have happened/ If Hamlet had become King of Denmark?
  • Boston Newsletter contents (in Spicer's handwriting)
  • Poems: Song for Bird and Myself and Song for the Great Mother
  • Laid In, Typed version of Spicer's table of contents for Boston Newsletter
  • Laid in, Poem, Lizzie-Emily
Box 8, Folder 6

Typescript and Notes 1956

Scope and Content Note

  • Typescript: The Unvert Manifesto
  • Fragment from Oliver Charming on back of envelope from Robert Duncan postmarked June 1956
  • Typed up version of the Orpheus story that begins Notebook 5
  • Loose pages tucked in, typescript of Song for the Great Mother
Box 9, Folder 1-12

After Lorca 1957

Scope and Content Note

Spicer's first published book (1957). This box contains: seven notebooks; a handwritten list of contents of After Lorca; a typescript, with Spicer's handwritten corrections, for White Rabbit edition (1957) with extra poem left out of published book ( Ballad of the Surrealist's Daughter, A Translation for W. S. Merwin.); publicity flyers for book launch for After Lorca in April 1957; typescript and Xerox made by Robin Blaser for his edition of After Lorca in The Collected Books Of Jack Spicer (1975), with Blaser's textual notes on the After Lorca poems.
Box 9, Folder 1

Alba 1957

Box 9, Folder 2

Notebook 1 1957

Scope and Content Note

  • Fragments: In the sterile sheets of seafoam and Saying goodbye to a ghost
  • Memos to himself on "Books," 'Encyclopedia Br," "Research," "Insurance"
  • First Lorca letter: Frankly I was quite surprised when Mr. Spicer asked me to write an introduction for this book.
  • Play: Buster Keaton's Shadow (unpublished)
  • Letter to Jim [Herndon]
  • Last letter to Lorca
  • First letter to Lorca, second draft
  • Loose: last page of notebook
Box 9, Folder 3

Notebook 2 1957

Scope and Content Note

  • Poems: Juan Ramon Jimenez - a Translation for John Ryan, Ode to Walt Whitman, A Translation for Steve Jonas, and The boy/ You will remember
  • Magic Workshop questionnaire
  • Poems: Forest - a Translation for Joe Dunn and Venus for Anne Simon
  • Fragment: The wine is coming out of his ears/ He gently lays the wine between/ Himself and his shadow.
  • Poems: Birds and Rabbits poem, Blue-rooted heron [ A Heron for Mrs. Altrocchi from Berkeley period], and Dear Merle Ellis
  • In _______________ endlessness (Magic Workshop questionnaire)
  • Four class preparations for SF State
  • Birds and Rabbits poem (2)
Box 9, Folder 4

Notebook 3 1957

Scope and Content Note

  • At the base of the throat is a little machine
  • Radar
  • Poem: I almost knocked on Room 73, then didn't
  • Three pages of Elegy for Kenneth Rexroth
  • Radar," "The eye is jealous
  • Another letter to Lorca: Loneliness is necessary for poetry
  • Poem: Pig
  • Radar: They are going on a journey
  • Poem: Hmm. Tahiti
  • Buster Keaton Rides Again, a Sequel, a Translation for the Big Cat Up There
  • Radar, a Postscript for Marianne Moore
  • Ballad-Letter to Lorca excised from After Lorca (printed in Nest by Gizzi and Killian)
Box 9, Folder 5

Notebook 4 1957

Scope and Content Note

  • Draft: Imaginary Elegies
  • Poem: You give the squeak of a butterfly
  • Dear Lorca, when I translate one of your poems . . .
  • Poem: I feel a black incubus crawling . . .
  • Alba: A Translation for Russ Fitzgerald
Box 9, Folder 6

Notebook 5 1957

Scope and Content Note

  • Fragments: She holds cold fire like a glass . . .
  • "In the middle of my mirror, a girl is drowning"
  • Ballad of the Four Elements for J.B. [James Broughton]
  • Letter to Lorca regarding dedications
  • Poem: The diamond of a single star
  • Loose Poems: The Moon and Lady Death, a Translation for Helen Adam, Song of the Poor, a Translation, Ballad of the Little Girl who invented the Universe, a translation for George Stanley, " The Ballad of Weeping, a Translation for Bob Connor," Suicide, a Translation for Eric Weir, Ballad of Sleeping Somewhere Else, a Translation for Ebbe Borregaard," Ballad of the Seven Passages, a Translation for Ebbe Borregaard ," and The Ballad of Escape, A Translation for Nat Harden
  • Poem: It was like making love to my shadow [ Pity]
  • Letter to Lorca: I would like to make poems out of real objects
  • More of Ballad of the 4 Elements: Wind, Water, Moon
  • Letter to Lorca re: Ebbe Borregaard (draft)
Box 9, Folder 7

Notebook 6 1957

Scope and Content Note

  • Several drafts of Ballad of Sleeping Somewhere Else, a Translation for Ebbe Borregaard - The pine needles fall like an ax in the forest
  • Verde, que te quiero verde (unfinished translation of Lorca's " Romance Sonambulo")
  • Song for September, a Translation for Don Allen-" In the quiet night the children are singing . . ."
  • Draft of The Moon and Lady Death, here called, Miss Moon and Lady Death
  • Another draft of The diamond of a single star
Box 9, Folder 8

Notebook 7 1957

Scope and Content Note

  • They Murdered You, An Elegy on the Death of Kenneth Rexroth
  • Afternoon, a Translation for John Barrow
  • Fragment: Somebody knocking/ Behind a beautiful closed door
  • The blond boy like the birds
  • Play- Stage Directions
  • " The Clock Jungle" and succeeding poems are in a series referred to later as The Clocks"--a poem separate from the After Lorca project
  • The Clock Jungle
  • A Poem Against Dada & the White Rabbits (April 1, 1957) and, on the same page: [ Walruses]
  • Not the sexual agony, but the persistent, heavy sound of leaves moving"
  • Letter to Robin Blaser, Imagine this not as a hurt or complaining letter
  • Frog, a Translation for Graham Mackintosh
  • Aquatic Park, A Translation for Jack Spicer- A green boat fishing in blue water . . .
Box 9, Folder 9

Typescript 1957

Box 9, Folder 10

Contents Page 1957

Box 9, Folder 11

Publicity 1957

Box 9, Folder 12

Robin Blaser's Notes undated

Box 9, Folder 8

The Clocks undated

Scope and Content Note

Serial poem by Spicer that exists solely in the notebook seven for After Lorca. Unpublished.
Box 10, Folder 1

Admonitions 1957

Scope and Content Note

Serial poem published after Spicer's death but written following After Lorca. Includes a typescript inscribed by Spicer to Blaser (including, as Blaser notes, a poem which wound up in A Book of Music). There are three other typescripts (not all of them complete) each with holograph corrections by Spicer. Finally there is Blaser's typescript for his edition of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer.
Box 10, Folder 2-3

[ Selected Poems] 1957

Scope and Content Note

Spicer's own selection of the best of his poems in 106 pages. There's a Xerox of a table of contents here (original is found in one of the Detective Novel notebooks) and then Spicer has assembled and numbered the entire manuscript, which is a mixed manuscript of typescript, Xerox and holograph poems. This manuscript tells us what Spicer thought most representative of his work in 1957, it also helps us establish chronology in some important ways (for the poems are presented chronologically and Spicer seems to have taken pains in establishing chronology). Many of the poems have been revised or corrected and these drafts might be considered more authoritative than earlier ones. And finally the Selected Poems manuscript includes ten or twelve unpublished poems unknown to us. Note: Spicer rifled this manuscript himself to assemble the poems of his next book, A Book of Music, so some of his numbered pages are missing from this manuscript, but can be found in A Book of Music.
Box 10, Folder 4

A Book of Music 1958

Scope and Content Note

Serial poem published after Spicer's death but complete by 1958. Typescript drawn from Selected Poems manuscript. "A Copy For Robin," with holograph leaves of one poem laid in. Xerox of cover illustration. Also includes Blaser's corrected typescript for his edition of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer.
Box 11, Folder 1-11

The Tower of Babel 1958

Scope and Content Note

Unfinished detective novel by Spicer, published after his death. Begun during the last weeks of Spicer's After Lorca project, this novel occupied Spicer through much of 1958. Consequently the seventeen notebooks for this novel, originally called That Summer, contain pieces of other Spicer works of the period, including just about all of Admonitions, A Book of Music, and Billy the Kid, thus helping with the dating of these three books.
Box 11, Folder 1

First Notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • The opening pages of the novel, comprising pages 1-21 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • The last bit of Garcia Lorca's introduction to Spicer's After Lorca.
  • Poem, Ridiculous is a word with three clowns
  • Poem, Hunters in the great Southwest ( Greasewood)
Box 11, Folder 2

Second Notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • Chapter 2 of the novel comprising pages 23-43 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, For Russ ( Admonitions)
  • Poem, For Joe ( Admonitions)
  • Poem, For Ebbe ( Admonitions)
  • Poem, For Bob (not used for Admonitions)
  • Poem, For Tom (not used for Admonitions)
Box 11, Folder 3

Third Notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Poem, An island/ Is a herd of reindeer (two pages)
  • Chapter 3 of the novel comprising pages 45-50 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, On the day after Christmas/ My true love gave to me
  • Poem, For Billy ( Admonitions)
  • Poem, For Hal ( Admonitions)
  • Letter to Mr. Lichtenstein (of Esquire magazine)
  • Poem, For Harvey ( Admonitions)
  • Poem, For Judson ( Admonitions)
  • Poem, For Nemmie ( Admonitions)
Box 11, Folder 4

Fourth Notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

Chapter 3 of the novel comprising pages 51-59 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel. Also includes poem, For Jack ( Admonitions).
Box 11, Folder 5

Fifth Notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

Chapter 3 of the novel comprising pages 60-69 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel. Also includes poem, "For Ed" ( Admonitions).
Box 11, Folder 6

Sixth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

Remainder of Chapter 3 of the novel, and very beginning of Chapter 4, comprising pages 70-76 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel. Also includes poems, And he said there are trails rising up each of the mountains ( Blocks) and For Jerry (completely different than the one in Admonitions).
Box 11, Folder 7

Seventh notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • More of Chapter 4 of the novel, comprising pages 77-89 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, A Postscript for Charles Olson (replacing crossed-out title For Maurice) ( Admonitions)
  • Letter, Dear Joe ( Admonitions)
Box 11, Folder 8

Eighth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • Poem, Vistas- On Visiting Spinoza's Grave and Backed up again against the wall
  • Remainder of Chapter 4 of the novel, comprising pages 90-102 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, A Valentine I Sent Russ (later, A Valentine) ( A Book of Music)
  • Poem, Improvisations On A Sentence By Poe ( A Book of Music)
  • Letter to Russell Fitzgerald ( We are about to begin a thirteenth day of rain)
Box 11, Folder 9

Ninth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • Chapter 5 of the novel, comprising pages 103-104 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, Cantata ( A Book of Music)
  • Poem, Carmen
  • Poem, Cantata (earlier version)
  • Poem, Mazurka For The Girls Who Brought Me Tranquilizers
Box 11, Folder 10

Tenth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

Continuing Chapter 5 of the novel, comprising pages 105-116 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel. Also includes poem, The Birds.
Box 11, Folder 11

Eleventh notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Letter to George Stanley, program notes for Stanley's reading at San Francisco State Poetry Center on March 26, 1958.
  • Continuing Chapter 5 of the novel, comprising pages 117-120 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, The Birds (again)
  • Poem, Song Of A Prisoner ( A Book of Music)
  • Poem, Song For A Raincoat
  • Poem, Birthday Pool
  • Poem, Mummer ( A Book of Music)
Box 12, Folder 1

Twelfth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • Chapter 6 of the novel, comprising pages 121-127 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, A Poem For Dada Day At The Place April 1, 1958
  • Poem, Orfeo ( A Book of Music)
  • Poem, Leda (revision of One Night Stand from Berkeley period)
  • Letter to Joan Daves (Spicer's agent for this novel)
  • Further drafts, A Poem For Dada Day At The Place April 1, 1958
Box 12, Folder 2

Thirteenth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • Chapter 6 of the novel, comprising pages 127-142 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Letters regarding reading from After Lorca to the Gator, to Kenneth Rexroth, to Luther Nichols of the San Francisco Chronicle, to Mr. Murphy of the San Francisco News, and to KPFA.
  • Poem, Jungle Warfare ( A Book of Music)
  • Poem, Three little waves
  • Poem, Hotel
Box 12, Folder 3

Fourteenth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • Chapter 6 of the novel, comprising pages 137-145 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, Duet for a Chair and a Table ( A Book of Music)
  • Table of Contents for Spicer's projected Selected Poems, from The Bridge Game through the recent Poem for Dada Day, Good Fridays and Poet (table of contents pages torn out of the notebook then reinserted).
  • Poem, Ghost Song ( A Book of Music)
Box 12, Folder 4

Fifteenth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

Chapter 6 of the novel, comprising pages 145-150 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel. Also includes the poem, Army Beach with Trumpets ( A Book of Music)-here untitled.
Box 12, Folder 5

Sixteenth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • Chapter 7 of the novel, comprising pages 151-160 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, I wanted to tell you that I was a blue lake
  • Poem, The Cardplayers ( A BOOK OF MUSIC)--three drafts
  • Letter to San Quentin
  • Poem, No daring shadows
  • Poem, I from Billy the Kid, here called A Book of Numbers- The radio that told me about the death of Billy the Kid.
  • Poem, " A Book of Music" ( A Book of Music)
Box 12, Folder 6

Seventeenth notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • Chapter 7 of the novel, comprising pages 161-163 of Talisman Press edition of The Tower of Babel.
  • Poem, V from Billy the Kid - I see Billy the Kid in a field of poplars with just one touch of moonlight
  • Poem, VII from Billy the Kid - Grasshoppers swarm through the desert
  • Poem, here called Billy & The Vultures- Billy The Kid/ I love you
  • Poem, The Pipe of Peace (not used in Billy the Kid)
  • Quotation, from George Sterling 1869-1926: O singer, fled afar!/ The erected darkness shall but idle the star/ That was your voice to man,/ Till morning come again/ And of the night that song alone remains.
Box 12, Folder 7-8

Typescript undated

Box 12, Folder 9

Correspondence, C.P. Crandell Literary Agency 1963 February 21

Scope and Content Note

The novel was returned by the agent several years later.
Box 13, Folder 1

Tarot Project 1958

Box 13, Folder 2-5

Billy the Kid 1958-1959

Scope and Content Note

A serial poem by Jack Spicer published by Robert Duncan and illustrated by Jess, October 1959.
Box 13, Folder 2

Notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • VI, The gun/ a false clue
  • IX, So the heart breaks, here called, Love Sonnets bare riddle
  • IV, What I mean is/ I/ Will tell you about the pain
  • Fragment: Pain is a wife while sorrow is only a mistress
  • VIII, Back where poetry is Our Lady/ Watches each motion
  • Portrait a/k/a Poet (number 106 in Selected Poems ms.)
  • List of poets in Spicer's circle, from Duncan to Merle Ellis
  • Some "Notes on Whitman" for Allen Joyce, written several years earlier and number 53 in Selected Poems manuscript
  • Fragment, I influence the process of hell my (sic) existing
  • II, A sprinkling of gold leaf looking like hell flowers
  • V, but not the same "V" as in published version. This one we have named A gang of teenagers.
  • Conspiracy, from A Book of Music
  • "Lamp," from Twelve Dead Geese manuscript; like Notes on Whitman, written several years earlier and number 61 in Selected Poems ms.
  • Poet, again from Selected Poems
  • III, There was nothing at the edge of the river ...
  • I, here called IV, a fragment, " The railroad/ That brought us a message about the death of Billy The Kid"
Box 13, Folder 3

Collage by Spicer and Photographs 1959

Box 13, Folder 4

Publication Illustrated by Jess 1959 October

Box 13, Folder 5

Typescript 1958

Box 13, Folder 6-7

A New Poem 1958

Scope and Content Note

An unpublished 1958 serial poem which exists in two states: notebook and typescript form.
Box 13, Folder 6

Notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Notebook for A New Poem with a clutch of manuscript pages laid in, used we assume by the typist. Some of the loose pages are obviously from a second notebook. The notebook itself is crammed with extraneous material and it is difficult not to believe that some of it is part of A New Poem, but there are no corresponding typed pages of this material, so it is hard to be sure.
  • Includes:
  • To be loved is well
  • Go to hell. Orpheus/ Did it with his harp
  • Two page resume of Spicer, including the publication of After Lorca which he dates to 1958.
  • Draft of a letter to Dora Williams
  • Draft of a letter to an agency handling teaching positions
  • Draft of a letter to Mr. Stone
  • Letter to Russell Fitzgerald (3 pages)
  • Then/ What is an angel
  • " After you have told your lover goodbye"
  • 'Trees. Those fuzzy things?' Williams' grandfather or was it his grandmother asked ion the way to the hospital. A journey/ We will all take. These two poems became part of Fifteen False Propositions Against God.
  • Second Train Poem, The trains from here leave on alternate tracks
  • Who will tell either of us if anything is true?
  • All the way down past the skull
  • Another letter to Russ
  • For Steve Jonas Who Is In Jail For Defrauding A Book Club
  • I met an angel
  • Hush now baby don't say a word.
  • If the diamond ring turns brass
  • Dear Sir, In these poems I tried to-These three poems are the final three pieces in Spicer's Fifteen False Propositions Against God.
  • Letter to Alfred Frankenstein
  • Prose poem along the lines of the Scrollwork in the Casket, which we are calling Zero.
  • Disperse each vowel
  • So God created man out of a pumpkin
  • There is room for wonder
  • Draft of letter [to Russell Fitzgerald?]
  • Loose pages:
  • The rope. A beginning (marked A New Poem)
  • How they will be bored by my love for you. (Two drafts)
  • The black X and Y of it
  • It is almost an insult to poetry to continue.
  • The gates of hell are frozen shut.
Box 13, Folder 7

Typescript 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • Typescript with Spicer's holograph corrections. The typescript is partially numbered, then it begins to be numbered again, and the last pages have no numbers.
  • Includes:
  • The gates of hell are frozen shut.
  • The paratroopers of poetry/ Fly hell
  • Not to be interested in what they tell you
  • Who will tell either of us if anything is true.
  • I met an angel
  • All the way down past the skull
  • How they will be bored by my love for you.
  • The gentleman wants to know
  • Go to hell. Orpheus/ Did it with his harp.
  • To be loved is well
  • Then/ What is an angel
  • It is almost an insult to poetry to continue
  • The rope. A beginning
  • Disperse each vowel
  • There is room for winter. I am beginning to have a cold.
  • To forget the landmarks totally
  • When a poem argues/ It argues wrongly
Box 13, Folder 8-9

Fifteen False Propositions Against God 1958

Scope and Content Note

Serial poem by Spicer published after his death as Fifteen False Propositions Against God, and first titled Five Poems, then Ten Poems for Poets, when Spicer started writing it in 1959.
Box 13, Folder 8

Notebook 1958

Scope and Content Note

  • 1, The self is no longer real
  • 6, Drop/ the word drops
  • 3, Beauty is so rare a thi--
  • 2, Look I am King of the Forest, including crossed out ending, The only things an intelligent man would consider, Yeats tells us,/ Is sex and the dead.
  • Draft of a letter to a resume service
  • 4, Real bad poems
  • Poem, Enormous motherfucker
  • 5, When the house falls you wonder
  • Poem, I am almost never right.
  • Letter to Miss Shrodes
  • Letter to Mr. Wood
  • Letter to Russ Fitzgerald
  • 10, Trees? Those fuzzy things, draft so different it is just about a different poem:
Box 13, Folder 9

Typescript 1958

Box 13, Folder 10

Hokku - Notebook 1959

Scope and Content Note

  • This includes holograph versions of several other poems published by Spicer in J magazine under the rubric of Hokku . This notebook includes:
  • Hokku ( Bitterness/ Bitter--ness)
  • Big, up there/ God-dess, they call her
  • Hell,/ If you have a horror of dreaming
  • Poem in James Alexander's hand beginning, Tide to Moon
  • Letter to Joe Dunn
  • Poem: No real resting place for weary head or hill ( Hill Billy)
  • Poem: The skull is not the bones (published in J by Mary Murphy)
  • Review: In One Arm And Out The Other
  • Poem: In-visible zombies (published in J by Mary Murphy)
  • Down to new beaches where the sea (published in J)
  • You have to make moral decisions
  • A million carpenters work on this single deal
  • It is as if/ Love had wings
Box 13, Folder 11

Hokku - Not/Even/Hatred/Remains 1959

Scope and Content Note

Published in J magazine.
Box 13, Folder 12

Hokku - Ten Hokkus for Dorrie 1959

Scope and Content Note

  • Unpublished serial poem by Jack Spicer, in orange Eaton's Typewriter Paper Tablet from 1959. Leaves loosely laid into folder, some of them written on both sides. These poems form part of a Hokku project Spicer worked on through 1959 and which might be published all together. There are more than ten items here despite the title of the piece.
  • This folder includes:
  • Mar-tar-dumbs-ville
  • At the back of the age (so called Swan Poem)
  • I make difficulties, you say, make impossible demands of belief on people
  • A hokku is something/ demand-ed
  • No one can rescue anyone from hell. Eurydice
  • In the smallest corner of words
  • Sure/ Eurydice is dead/ In hell or whatever (this poem published in 1959 issue of Spicer's magazine J which helps date the whole
  • It is time to clean my house (likewise in J)
  • What I miss/ Is Mrs. Blake
  • Get away zombie, I'm going to burn you
  • Lack of oxygen puzzles the air (published in J by "Mary Murphy")
  • Saying love with five thousand puffs and starts of words
  • Extend it In words (verso, bridge scores for Allen Joyce, Jack Spicer, George Berthelon, Pat Wilson, and Edgar Austin)
  • This ocean, humiliating in its disguises (This is the first poem in Language, the book Spicer wrote in 1963-65.
  • Loving you/ My poetry said things I don't know (published in J)
  • Past/ Remembering (also in J)
  • Long quote from Sigmund Freud's General Theory of Psychoanalysis
Box 13, Folder 13

[ Hokku] - Mary Murphy Poem undated

Scope and Content Note

In J Spicer also published several Hokku under the name of "Mary Murphy." Here's a poem possibly written by a "real" Mary Murphy in Mexico City.
Box 13, Folder 14

A Birthday Poem for Jim (and James) Alexander 1959

Scope and Content Note

  • 1959 serial poem in nine parts. Note that the concluding poem, The Poet Insists On Having The Last Word was published in J magazine (1959) under the title Epilog for Jim. It looks as though this poem and Ten Hokkus for Dorrie were written on the same kind of tablet paper.
  • It is a story for chil-/ dren
  • Jim-almost-James tells me he likes Tolkien
  • The 49ers battling to keep place with the Baltimore Colts
  • Deep-/er than meaning
  • Sucking all the personal from his birthday one obtains
  • Poetry seeks occasion. In a man's life
  • Days without rain. The waste land
  • This poem ends in anger/ Like a novel
  • It is Gresham's Law
  • The Poet Insists On Saying The Last Word
Box 13, Folder 15

Apollo Sends Seven Nursery Rhymes to James Alexander 1959

Scope and Content Note

Serial poem published after Spicer's death but written in 1958 or 1959 (Blaser dates it 1959). Includes two typescripts and a single manuscript leaf of Fire Works poem. Note, among these typescripts we have seen no justification for Blaser's spelling of the word "nursery" as "nursury" in his edition of this poem in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer.
Box 13, Folder 16

[ Dignity] undated

Scope and Content Note

  • A brief serial poem in five parts which might be linked to the final Elegies of Spicer, one of which begins, Dig-ni-ty
  • Dignity is part of a man
  • I miss you, I said.
  • Then, as we went toward the big ocean . . .
  • God is merely domestic.
  • I loved him. I loved him.
Box 13, Folder 17

Imaginary Elegies 1948-1958

Scope and Content Note

The first three elegies were begun in 1948 and Spicer began writing a fourth in 1953. These four were finished by 1957 and dated 1950-55. Two more were written in 1959. The first four appeared in Donald Allen's influential anthology The New American Poetry 1945-1960. Spicer apparently planned for ten all together. At one time Psychoanalysis: An Elegy was numbered among them.
Box 14, Folder 1-7

Homage to Creeley 1960

Scope and Content Note

  • Serial poem published by Spicer in 1960. Later it was to become the first part of a longer book, The Heads Of The Town Up To The Aether. Many, many manuscripts versions and typescripts of this poem. [Note: Blood And Sand appears to be from this manuscript. There are three drafts present of this particular poem.]
  • Also Includes:
  • It is impossible to stop. This coldness which and His Life at Stake
Box 14, Folder 1

Manuscript Drafts 1960

Box 14, Folder 2

Mimeo Copies 1960

Box 14, Folder 3

For Cegeste and For Heurtebise 1960

Box 14, Folder 4

Typescript 1960

Box 14, Folder 5

For Cegeste 1960

Box 14, Folder 6

For The Princess 1960

Box 14, Folder 7

For Heurtebise 1960

Box 14, Folder 8

Helen: A Revision - Notebook 1960

Scope and Content Note

Unfinished (?) serial poem by Jack Spicer, 1959/1960. Note that the notebook in which Spicer wound up writing A Textbook Of Poetry bears the title on its cover, Helen: A Revision. It's possible that Spicer meant Helen to be one of the books of Heads of the Town and changed his mind, abandoning the Helen project.
This notebook includes the following poems:
  • Helen: A Revision (looks like a play, beginning with a speech by Zeus) (two pages).
  • And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost
  • The focusing/ Is not their business.
  • And in the skyey march of flesh
  • A twisted smile, a flower I
  • Which without feeling to the enormous source
  • Half-real, the iceberg
  • Nothing complete at the opera but singing
  • An image of withdrawal. All/ Of her beauty
  • 'You have done big things,' said the dwarf to the answer.
  • Then/ Even the extraordinary is unimportant
  • Troy is a bathtub
  • Years ago a kindly English professor told me . . .
  • The last edge of the voice
  • He was beautiful, I am trying to leave him and it at that.
  • To make her into an artifact is to try to kill her
  • Invited a daimon
  • Dear Russ, I am writing to you in the middle of a poem about Helen
  • Informed against itself
  • Where the old distrust breaks through the floor of the grainery
  • Black ghosts and black ghosts
  • Nothing is known about Helen but her voice
  • I have written everything for other people
Box 14, Folder 9-17

The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether: A Fake Novel about the Life of the Arthur Rimbaud 1960-1962

Scope and Content Note

Includes the above, with three additional books of similar length. Manuscript notebooks for A Fake Novel about the Life of the Arthur Rimbaud, A Textbook Of Poetry, and Explanatory Notes. Typescripts of the same follow the manuscript notebooks. The typescripts Blaser prepared for his edition of this poem are in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer.
Box 14, Folder 9

Notebook 1960-1961

Box 14, Folder 10

Typescript 1960-1961

Box 14, Folder 11

Explanatory Notes - Notebook 1960-1961

Box 14, Folder 12

Explanatory Notes - Typescript 1960-1961

Box 14, Folder 13

A Textbook of Poetry - Notebook 1960-1961

Box 14, Folder 14-15

A Textbook of Poetry 1960-1961

Box 14, Folder 16

Cover Design 1962

Scope and Content Note

Cover illustration for Auerhahn edition of this book, original drawing by Fran Herndon.
Box 14, Folder 17

Publication with corrections by Blaser 1962

Scope and Content Note

Blaser's copy of the published book with his notes in them.
Box 15, Folder 1-2

An Exercise 1961

Scope and Content Note

An Exercise, serial poem published after Spicer's death but written in 1961 (Blaser dates it 1959).
Box 15, Folder 1

Notebook 1961

Scope and Content Note

An Exercise notebook contains most of the Exercise material in it but including also Dover Beach, the lead poem in Spicer's 1961 volume Lament for the Makers. Tucked into the An Exercise notebook is Spicer's Notes On Robert Duncan's Essay, 'The Decapitation Of Several Dead Horses' To Be Published In The Nation
Box 15, Folder 2

An Exercise 1961

Scope and Content Note

An Exercise manuscript titled by Spicer.
Box 15, Folder 3

For Major General Abner Doubleday, Inventor of Baseball and First American President of the Theosophical Society 1961

Scope and Content Note

  • Unpublished serial poem by Jack Spicer, 1961, including the following sections:
  • Without a Period At The End
  • Quodam et Futurus
  • Mary Murphy's Chowder
  • Concerning the Future Of American Poetry II [Note, part I is in An Exercise (above)]
  • Scheme
  • Possession
  • Friday or Saturday
  • And one loose title page with marks on it for students in Spicer's summer 1961 extension class he taught for UC Berkeley. Note: These Abner Doubleday poems were written in the middle of the notebook for An Exercise and then ripped out and placed separately.
Box 15, Folder 4-7

Lament for the Makers 1961

Scope and Content Note

Lament for the Makers, 1961 serial poem by Spicer.
Box 15, Folder 4

Notebook 1961

Scope and Content Note

  • Includes:
  • Letter to Wesley Day by Spicer writing as Robin Blaser
  • Letter to Stan Persky ( Moss doesn't exist and you know he doesn't exist)
  • Poems: "Shark Island," Daily waste washed by the tides down/ No numbers." "The Birds," "The Birth of Venus," "Lament for the Makers," "Stinson
  • Letter to James Alexander ( Cadaverse. Saying no is monstrous.)
  • Poems: Revisions (no text), For B.W." "For B.W. II," "For B.W. III
  • Poem laid in loose: Struck Dead By A Lion
Box 15, Folder 5

Dover Beach 1961 May

Scope and Content Note

Typescript with Xerox appended of Spicer's manuscript for Dover Beach.
Box 15, Folder 6

Typescript 1961

Scope and Content Note

The typescript Blaser prepared for his edition of this poem in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer.
Box 15, Folder 7

White Rabbit Press Publication with Illustrations by Graham Mackintosh 1962

Scope and Content Note

Two copies of White Rabbit edition.
Box 15, Folder 8-10

The Red Wheelbarrow [1962?]

Scope and Content Note

The Red Wheelbarrow serial poem published after Spicer's death (Blaser dates it 1959, Killian believes it is 1962).
Box 15, Folder 8

Notebook [1962?]

Scope and Content Note

  • Spicer's The Red Wheelbarrow notebook in pink "Teen Age Theme Book" includes:
  • Poems torn out of notebook and laid loose: Love, tender as an eagle it swoops down, Love II, You have clipped his wings, Love III, Who pays attention to the noise the stone makes, Love IV, There are no holds on the stone, It looks
  • Poem: Come drink your wine and watch them play/ For there is nothing to be said/ The childish faces of the dead/ Are too late for our eyes to see. (variation on All Hallows Eve)
  • Letter to Robert Duncan from "John Brodie"
  • Poem, It's dark all night
  • Poem On The Flap Of Things
  • Poem, Thank you for all your fine funeral
  • Love 8, Love ate the red wheelbarrow
  • Love IV (the same)
  • Love V, Never looking him in eye once. All mythology
  • Love VI, Hoot! The piercing screams of ghosts vanish on the horizon
  • Love VII, Nothing in the rock hears nothing
  • A Red Wheelbarrow [first poem in sequence]
  • Love, tender as an eagle
  • Love II
  • Poem, Love has five muscles
  • Love III
  • Poem, His smile was past the last bit of his teeth
  • Poem, For Grhan [sic]
  • Fragment, I love you but this has nothing to do with the poem
  • Poem, midnight (not by Spicer)
  • Spicer's criticisms of a 40 page manuscript
Box 15, Folder 9

Manuscript [1962?]

Scope and Content Note

Spicer's "fine" manuscript.
Box 15, Folder 10

Typescript [1962?]

Scope and Content Note

Typescript with Spicer's handwritten correction.
Box 15, Folder 11

Spider Music [1962?]

Scope and Content Note

Abandoned serial poem by Spicer circa 1962, including the following poems: Spider Music, Whom, Greece, January, Gladstone, and Nikko-San. Spider Music, (later Spider Song) was submitted for publication in early 1962.
Box 15, Folder 12-14

The Holy Grail 1962, 1964

Scope and Content Note

Serial poem from 1962. No manuscript, but a good typescript. One "extra" poem, Pudding, which did not make it into The Holy Grail but was written at the same time, as a comparison with the manuscript will indicate.
Box 15, Folder 12

Typescript 1962

Scope and Content Note

The typescript Blaser prepared for his edition of this poem in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer.
Box 15, Folder 13-14

White Rabbit Press Publication 1964

Scope and Content Note

Two variants of the published edition, one with purple and gold cover, one with red and black.
Box 15, Folder 15

For Harris [Schiff] - Notebook 1963

Scope and Content Note

Serial poem by Spicer abandoned summer 1963. Three poems only in one notebook marked The Champion Line. The poems include: For Harris, For Harris II, and Interlude: Bill's Painting.
Box 15, Folder 16

[ Map Poems] [1963]

Scope and Content Note

Serial project by Jack Spicer from late 1963. Five poems with accompanying maps, in manuscript: 137, 217, 155, 185, and 111. Note, the map is missing for 155 but there is a map for the number 153 which is contiguous to our missing piece. It looks as though Spicer owned a large number (few dozen) of browning Xerox pages of a 1918 "stack map" and wrote a number of poems inspired by the map pages. One of the poems in Thing Language, the first section of his subsequent book Language, is apparently from this series ( A redwood forest is invisible at night.)
Box 16, Folder 1-6

Language 1963-1965

Scope and Content Note

Language (1963-65), the last poem published during Spicer's lifetime. Many drafts of typescript, including some rarities: some typescripts of individual poems from Thing Language, including proofs from 1964 journal Open Space, in which several of these poems first appeared. Typescript with title in Spicer's handwriting.
Box 16, Folder 1

"Six Poems for Poetry Chicago" including Correspondence 1965 June

Scope and Content Note

Six Poems for Poetry Chicago including the rejection letter from Poetry Chicago (Henry Rago) and accompanying note from poet Richard Duerden.
Box 16, Folder 2

This is submitted to your Valentine contest. [1963-1965]

Scope and Content Note

Includes manuscripts of two "single" poems left out of Language but written at the same time: This Is Submitted To Your Valentine Contest ( Be brave to things . . . ) and Ch'ang Ch'eng (translation of Mao)
Box 16, Folder 3

Open Space Roots 1964

Box 16, Folder 4

Typescript 1963-1965

Scope and Content Note

The typescript Blaser prepared for his edition of this poem in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer.
Box 16, Folder 5-6

White Rabbit Press Publication 1965

Scope and Content Note

Two copies of White Rabbit edition of Language.
Box 16, Folder 7-9

Book of Magazine Verse 1965, 1966

Scope and Content Note

The last book Spicer worked on was published a year after his 1965 death.
Box 16, Folder 7

Typescript 1965

Scope and Content Note

Typescript from which 1966 White Rabbit Press edition was printed. Typescript Blaser prepared for his edition of this poem in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer.
Box 16, Folder 8

Publication without Cover or Front Matter 1966

Scope and Content Note

Galley without covers of White Rabbit Press edition, and another with plain looking covers, very different from final version.
Box 16, Folder 9

White Rabbit Press Publication 1966

Box 16, Folder 10-11

[ Selected Letters] undated

Scope and Content Note

Note: the following three books (Selected Letters, Poems and The Collected Books of Jack Spicer) were edited by Robin Blaser and are in different states of completion. [ Selected Letters]: Blaser collected Spicer's letters from a number of sources and typed them up for this prospective volume. There are some letters here in this typescript for which the originals are missing. Letters include those to Ezra Pound, Robert Duncan (with Duncan's reply), Myrsam Wixman, John Allen Ryan, Robin Blaser, Eileen Fitgerald, Graham Mackintosh, and James Alexander.
Box 16, Folder 12

[ Poems] undated

Scope and Content Note

[ Poems] by Jack Spicer which did not fit into the published books. This is a forerunner to Donald Allen's edition of " One Night Stand," and includes the texts of the (unpublished at the time of Blaser's compilation) Book of Music and Admonitions.
Box 16, Folder 13-15

The Collected Books of Jack Spicer [1975]

Scope and Content Note

Typescript.
Box 17, Folder 1-13

The Collected Books of Jack Spicer [1975]

Box 17, Folder 1-2

The Collected Books of Jack Spicer [1975]

Box 17, Folder 3

After Lorca [1975]

Box 17, Folder 4

Lament for the Makers [1975]

Box 17, Folder 5

The Book of Music [1975]

Box 17, Folder 6

Fifteen False Propositions Against God [1975]

Box 17, Folder 7

Billy the Kid [1975]

Box 17, Folder 8

Admonitions [1975]

Box 17, Folder 9

The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether [1975]

Box 17, Folder 10

Language [1975]

Box 17, Folder 11

The Holy Grail [1975]

Box 17, Folder 12

Book of Magazine Verse [1975]

Box 17, Folder 13

Robin Blaser's Notes [1975]

 

2:3 Plays 1954-1956, undated

Physical Description: Boxes 18-19

Arrangement

Box 18 contains plays arranged alphabetically. Box 19 contains only one play Troilus.

Scope and Content Note

This subseries contains plays written by Jack Spicer.
Box 18, Folder 1

Armed with Madness - Notebook undated

Scope and Content Note

Spicer wrote some scenes for a dramatization of Mary Butts' notable modernist novel of the 1930s; a few scenes remain in this notebook. Also, Spicer's written proposal for developing Butts' work into play form.
Box 18, Folder 2

The Bacchae undated

Scope and Content Note

Unfinished play by Spicer. Two page manuscript (with handwritten cast of characters); one page holograph of choral song used in The Bacchae ( What shall we do with a drunken savior?) and unfinished typescript of the play.
Box 18, Folder 3

Notebook 1955-1956

Scope and Content Note

  • Contains:
  • Phases of the Moon laid in: Phase 2, IInd Phase of the Moon, Closer to the north," and You have woken from sleep like a child for so many"
  • Poem: Old Eurydice, lovely civil-war general"
  • Play: Untitled featuring Jesse Reginald James
  • Play: Sex and the Dead: A Halloween Mask
  • Play: The Language of the Dead: A Masque
  • Fragments including: There were soldiers," You are almost as old as the youngest of us can remember," and " Then the gray haired old lady said"
  • Poem: Brooklyn Museum"
Box 18, Folder 4-11

Pentheus and the Dancers 1954, undated

Box 18, Folder 4

Notebook 1 1954

Scope and Content Note

("Tumbler Eye-Ease" notebook): pp 1-14, draft of Pentheus, [here The Worshippers]; final page, note.
Box 18, Folder 5

Notebook 2 1954

Scope and Content Note

Draft of Pentheus [here The Dancers or The Worshipers]
Box 18, Folder 6

Notebook 3 1954

Scope and Content Note

  • Third notebook ("The Gyral, the new superior wirebound note book")
  • p1, fragment: He moves in memory to the water's edge // His memory extends to the water's edge // Foreshadows and extends to the w. e.
  • p6, fragment: [ What happens now?...]
  • p9, prose-poem: in that moment, he could see Richard's whole world stretching forth...
  • pp. 23-27, draft of Pentheus
  • p28, plan for class exercise
  • pp. 31-45, draft of Pentheus (cont.), with linguistic notes on reverse pages.
Box 18, Folder 7

Notebook 4 1954

Scope and Content Note

Fourth notebook ("Ready Coil-Bound Theme and Notebook"): draft of Pentheus dated "Golden Gate YMCA, SF, August 25, 1954"
Box 18, Folder 8

Notebook 5 1954

Scope and Content Note

Fifth notebook ("The Spiral Combination Theme and Notebook"): draft of Pentheus, [here Pentheus and the Dancers]
Box 18, Folder 9

Notebook 6 1954

Scope and Content Note

Sixth notebook ("The Spiral Combination Theme and Notebook"): marked The Bacchae by Robin Blaser, but part of Pentheus: pp 1-2 [Song for Dionysus]; pp 5-11, draft of Pentheus; p, 15, The Seven Vowels (from After Lorca); p18, notes on Pentheus.
Box 18, Folder 10

Manuscript Notes undated

Box 18, Folder 11

An Adaptation - Typescript (Original) 1954 August 25

Box 18, Folder 12

An Adaptation - Typescript (Copy) 1954 August 25

Box 18, Folder 13

An Adaptation - Typescript (Copy) 1954 August 25

Box 18, Folder 14

Quick, Said the Bird undated

Scope and Content Note

Full-length three-act play by Spicer, apparently abandoned after one full act and about half of the second. Notes on Spicer's play Quick, Said the Bird by Spicer and by an unidentified teacher.
Box 18, Folder 15

Sir Orfeo - Notebook undated

Scope and Content Note

  • Play written during Spicer's Boston period. Only a few pages in this book are about Orfeo. Includes:
  • Fragment, No, I don't think so./ I don't want to marry you because you're the murderer.
  • Poem, The Day Five Thousand Fish Died Along the Charles River (draft)
  • Fragment, " From the west came a cloud that was shaped like a dog./ Fire will burn."
Box 18, Folder 16

Words Alone are Certain Good undated

Box 18, Folder 17

Young Goodman Brown undated

Box 18, Folder 18

Young Goodman Brown - Notebook undated

Box 19, Folder 1-13

Troilus 1955, undated

Scope and Content Note

Play by Spicer, in eight notebooks and final version edited by Robin Blaser in 1970s.
Box 19, Folder 1

Notebook 1 undated

Scope and Content Note

  • First notebook (Tumbler Eye-Ease notebook) begins with last scene of Pentheus (see above).
  • Opening scenes of Troilus.
  • Fragment, Family Graveyard. Tomorrow (your time) will be Thanksgiving. Let us hope that that time we will have something to be thankful about,
  • First two lines of Imaginary Elegies I.
  • Poem, Clorinda at the bar . . .
  • Fragment, Winter has come into your heart
  • Fragment, Cross word
  • Poem, And if I said goodbye . . .
  • Note for Troilus, To Aunt Rhody," "We'll plow empty pastures (3)/ When the war is won./ O Zeus our master (3)/ Send us home to rest.
  • First notebook (Penworthy Composition Book)
  • Troilus, scenes 1 (end), 2, 3, 4 of first act and Notes on lost prologue
Box 19, Folder 2

Notebook 2 undated

Scope and Content Note

  • Second notebook (The Spiral Composition Book)
  • Troilus, Act II, Scene II, III, IV
  • Poem, As if a Chinese vase was filled with blood . . .
Box 19, Folder 3

Notebooks 3 undated

Scope and Content Note

  • Third notebook (Golden West Theme Book)
  • Act IV, Scene 1, 2, 3, 4
  • Letter to Arthur Kloth Thank you very much for the brusque (this can't be the right spelling) and the unbrusque letter.
  • Troilus, Prologue
Box 19, Folder 4

Notebook 4 undated

Scope and Content Note

  • Fourth notebook (Ready Coil-Bound Theme and Notebook)
  • End of Act III
  • Act IV, scene 1, 2, 3, 4, dated San Francisco, June 25, 1955
Box 19, Folder 5

Notebook 5 undated

Scope and Content Note

  • Fifth notebook (Ready Coil-Bound Theme and Notebook)
  • End of Act II, Scene 2; Act II, scene 3, 4
  • Act III, scene 1, 2, 3, 4
Box 19, Folder 6

Notebook 6 undated

Scope and Content Note

  • The rest of the notebooks are fair copies:
  • Sixth notebook (Golden West Theme Book)
  • Prologue, Troilus
  • Act I, scene 1, 2
Box 19, Folder 7

Notebook 7 undated

Scope and Content Note

  • Seventh notebook (Golden West Theme Book)
  • Act I, end of scene 2, scene 3, 4
  • Act II, scene 1, 2 (though mislabeled here as 3 by Spicer)
Box 19, Folder 8

Notebook 8 undated

Scope and Content Note

  • Eighth notebook (Golden West Theme Book)
  • Fragment, What could be less exciting than Karl Shapiro, a championship fight between Marciano and Dan Cockrell, or an exhibition game between Cleveland and the San Francisco Seals. Great sports and great poetry thrive from the contagion of excitement and die in its absence."
  • Troilus, Act III, scene 1, 2, 3, 4
  • Fragment, Motorcycling into No Hope, Arizona was . . .
  • Poem, The window is a mirror
Box 19, Folder 9

Notebook 9 undated

Scope and Content Note

  • Ninth notebook (Ready Coil-Bound Theme and Notebook)
  • End of Act III
  • Act IV, scene 1, 2, 3, 4, dated San Francisco, June 25, 1955
Box 19, Folder 10

Robin Blaser's Notes undated

Box 19, Folder 11

Typescript - Prologue undated

Scope and Content Note

Longer version of the same, signed by editors Blaser and Stephanie Jud
Box 19, Folder 12

Typescript - (pp. 1-17) undated

Scope and Content Note

Partial typescript and mimeo version of same incomplete typescript.
Box 19, Folder 13

Typescript (Complete) 1955 June 25

 

2:4 Prose undated

Physical Description: Box 20

Arrangement

This subseries is arranged alphabetically by title.

Scope and Content Note

Contains some of the prose of Spicer, including essays, and short stories.
Box 20, Folder 1

Boy King of California undated

Box 20, Folder 2

Death by Water undated

Box 20, Folder 3

The Lion in our Teargarten undated

Box 20, Folder 4

Marriage undated

Box 20, Folder 5

Number One - Ghost Story undated

Box 20, Folder 6

Number Two - Mary undated

Box 20, Folder 7

Pilgrimage - Fragment undated

Box 20, Folder 8

Pillar of Salt undated

Box 20, Folder 9

Pisa undated

Box 20, Folder 10

Republic of Guallala undated

Box 20, Folder 11

The Scroll-Work on the Casket undated

Box 20, Folder 12

Sebastian undated

Box 20, Folder 13

To Write Science Fiction undated

Box 20, Folder 14

The Tragic Disappearance of Cleanth Penn Ransom undated

Box 20, Folder 15

Verweile Doch, Du Bist So Schon undated

Box 20, Folder 16

Volund undated

Box 20, Folder 17

A Wasp undated

Box 20, Folder 18

The Way The World Ends undated

Box 20, Folder 19

The White Horse Bar - Fragment undated

Box 20, Folder 20

Miscellaneous Fragments undated

 

2:5 Periodical Publications 1947-1949, 1962, 1969-1970, undated

Physical Description: Box 21

Arrangement

This subseries is arranged alphabetically by publication title.

Scope and Content Note

Consists of publications containing works by Spicer.
Box 21, Folder 1

Audience, Vol. IV, no. 2 undated

Box 21, Folder 2

Four Pages May 1948

Box 21, Folder 3

Georgia Straight 1970

Box 21, Folder 4

Horus Magazine undated

Box 21, Folder 5

Occident Magazine 1947, 1949, 1954, undated

Box 21, Folder 6

N Magazine 1962

Box 21, Folder 7

Poesia Ahora 1962 June

Scope and Content Note

With note by Larry Fagin.
Box 21, Folder 8

Tish D Magazine February 1969

 

2:6 Notebooks 1945-1955, 1961-1962, undated

Physical Description: Box 22-23

Arrangement

This subseries is arranged chronologically.

Scope and Content Note

This subseries contains notebooks of miscellaneous work by Jack Spicer, including poetry, letters, non-fiction writings and school work.
Box 22, Folder 1-3

Notebook 1-3 [1945-1955]

Box 22, Folder 4

Notebook 4 [1945-1955]

Scope and Content Note

Includes the essay Some Critics of the Poetry of D.H. Lawrence and the poem On Falling Into Your Eyes.
Box 22, Folder 5

Notebook 5 [1945-1955]

Scope and Content Note

Includes The Scroll-Work on the Casket.
Box 22, Folder 6-12

Notebook 6-12 [1945-1955]

Box 23, Folder 1

Notebook 13 [1945-1955]

Scope and Content Note

Includes Murray Reminiscences; notes with Robert Duncan.
Box 23, Folder 2

Notebook 14 [1945-1955]

Box 23, Folder 3

Notebook 15 [1945-1955]

Scope and Content Note

Includes A Night in Four Parts.
Box 23, Folder 4-7

Notebook 16-19 [1945-1955]

Box 23, Folder 8

An Elemental Poem for Gene Wahl 1945-1946

Box 23, Folder 11

Fourth Elegy Notebook - D.H. Lawrence Bibliography for Mark Schorer 1948

Box 23, Folder 12

D.H. Lawrence Bibliography 1948

Scope and Content Note

Also includes a letter to Madelaine Gleason and the poem To smoke with pimps their transcendental tea.
Box 23, Folder 13

Manhattan notebook 1955-1956

Scope and Content Note

Includes the poems Leech, the treacherous tigers... Hisperica Famina; Hymn to Aphrodite; White as Southern Blindness; and When the Moon Comes Out.
Box 23, Folder 14

Hymn 1958

Box 23, Folder 15

Orpheus (Purposes) Against Corso 1961-1962

Box 23, Folder 16

Diary - April 1st undated

Box 23, Folder 17

Letters to Ebbe Borregaard undated

Scope and Content Note

Also includes What Did the Indians Do and chess annotations.
Box 23, Folder 10

Math Calculations undated

Box 23, Folder 9

Translations undated

 

Series 3 J Magazine 1959

Physical Description: Box 24

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically.

Scope and Content Note

This series consists of materials relating to the literary magazine J edited by Spicer, including copies of the magazine, literary submissions, correspondence, and editorial materials.
Box 24, Folder 1

Correspondence 1959

Box 24, Folder 2

Editorial 1959

Box 24, Folder 3

Magazine 1 1959

Box 24, Folder 4

Magazine 2 1959

Box 24, Folder 5

Magazine 3 1959

Box 24, Folder 6

Magazine 4 1959

Box 24, Folder 7

Magazine 5 1959

Box 24, Folder 8

Magazine 8 1959

Box 24, Folder 9

Miscellaneous 1959

Box 24, Folder 10-13

Submissions 1959

 

Series 4 Teaching and Lectures 1946, 1956-1979, undated

Physical Description: Box 25

Arrangement

Arranged chronologically.

Scope and Content Note

This series consists of materials that relate to Jack Spicer's teaching activities in poetry and linguistics, including lectures, classes, and workshops.
Box 25, Folder 1

UC Berkeley Writer's Conference 1946 May 13

Box 25, Folder 2

The Boston Newsletter 1956

Box 25, Folder 3

Correspondence 1956-1979

Box 25, Folder 4

Magic Workshop 1957

Box 25, Folder 5

Magic Workshop Poems 1957

Box 25, Folder 6-7

Magic Workshop Questionnaires 1957

Box 25, Folder 8

The Poetry Center Readings - Introductions 1957-1963

Box 25, Folder 9

UC Berkeley Extension Courses 1961-1962

Box 25, Folder 10

UC Berkeley - Miscellaneous 1963-1964

Box 25, Folder 11

Stanford University - Linguistics 1963-1964

Box 25, Folder 12

Stanford University - Basic Communications Bibliography 1963-1964

Box 25, Folder 13

Stanford University - Notes 1963-1964

Box 25, Folder 14

Vancouver Lectures - Robin Blaser's Notes 1965

Scope and Content Note

The Vancouver lectures were later published in their entirety by Peter Gizzi in his edition of The House that Jack Built.
Box 25, Folder 15

Vancouver Lecture - Dictation and A Textbook of Poetry Typescript 1965 June 13

Box 25, Folder 16

Vancouver Lecture - The Serial Poem and The Holy Grail Typescript 1965 June 15

Box 25, Folder 17

Linguistics Survey of California Note Cards undated

 

Series 5 Schoolwork 1939-1947, undated

Physical Description: Box 26-27

Arrangement

Arranged chronologically and then alphabetically.

Scope and Content Note

Consists of school work from high school and writing and assignments from college.
Box 26, Folder 1

High School English 1939

Box 26, Folder 2

High School Papers 1939-1942

Box 26, Folder 3

Redlands College - Directive Writings Poems 1943

Box 26, Folder 4

A Dialect Survey of Redlands, Cal. [circa 1949]

Box 26, Folder 5

Kantorowicz, Ernst H. - Writings 1943-1947

Box 26, Folder 6

Kantorowicz - Notes [1945-1947]

Box 26, Folder 7-9

Beowulf undated

Scope and Content Note

Translated by Jack Spicer. Preliminary notes; prose crib pages ripped from a textbook; Spicer's handwritten translation over many sheets and two notebooks; translation encompasses lines 1-2777.
Box 26, Folder 10

A Critique of Perry's General Theory of Value undated

Box 26, Folder 11

Donne's Use of Mediaeval Geographical Lore (Paper) English 199 UC Berkeley undated

Box 26, Folder 12

Notecards undated

Box 26, Folder 13

Notes - Bible Verses undated

Box 26, Folder 14

Notes - Donne Essay undated

Box 26, Folder 15

Notes - Emerson undated

Box 26, Folder 16

Notes - English Constitution, Shakespeare, Dryden undated

Box 26, Folder 17

Notes - Finnegan's Wake undated

Box 27, Folder 1

Notes - Linguistics undated

Box 27, Folder 2

Notes - Old English undated

Box 27, Folder 3

Notes - Physiology undated

Box 27, Folder 4

Notes on Teaching Grammar and Syntax undated

Box 27, Folder 5

Paper on Shakespeare's and Dryden's Troilus and Cressida undated

Box 27, Folder 6

Paper on Yeats and Wilde undated

Box 27, Folder 7

Realism and Convention in the Book of the Duchess (Paper) undated

Box 27, Folder 8

The Spider and the Fly Paper and Notes undated

Box 27, Folder 9

Student Papers undated

Box 27, Folder 10

Tractatus Eboracenses IV undated

 

Series 6 Writings by Others 1948-1966, 1982, undated

Physical Description: Box 28-31; Oversize Box 1, folder 1

Arrangement

This series is arranged alphabetically by the last name of the author.

Scope and Content Note

This series consists of works written by other people. Consists primarily of poetry written by various correspondents to Jack Spicer, often looking for editorial advice. Also consists of poetry written by Spicer colleague Stephen Jonas. Several folders contain works written by Jonas in jail. These works are written on jail toilet paper.
Box 28, Folder 1

Adam, Helen - Poems undated

Box 28, Folder 2

Alexander, James - Poems undated

Box 28, Folder 3

Alexander, James- A play undated

Box 28, Folder 4

[Belloch, Phillis Benbow]- Poems undated

Box 28, Folder 5

Blaser, Robin - Poems undated

Box 28, Folder 6

Bliss, Donald Thayer - Poem 1949

Oversize Box 1, Folder 1

Borregaard, Ebbe - Poem translation undated

Scope and Content Note

With note "A translation for Jack with non-intended puns." Also consists of Spicer poem on verso - The Protocols of the Elders of Unwisdom."
Box 28, Folder 7

Brautigan, Richard - Poems 1963

Box 28, Folder 8

Brautigan, Richard - Trout Fishing in America Typescript undated

Box 28, Folder 9

Broderick, John - Sun Spots MS. 1965

Box 28, Folder 10

Brown, Dirk - Poem undated

Box 28, Folder 11

Crowe, Donald - The Flower Blower undated

Box 28, Folder 12

Dull, Harold - Poems undated

Box 28, Folder 13

Duncan, Robert - Poems 1952

Box 28, Folder 14

Dunn, Joe - Poems 1956, undated

Box 28, Folder 15

Ellingham, Lewis - No Poems, Hem, and Essays 1961, 1962, 1965

Box 28, Folder 16

Everson, Landis - Poetry undated

Box 28, Folder 17

Ganzeveld, Don - Poem, Jack Spicer 1965

Box 28, Folder 18

Granger, John - MA Thesis - The Idea of the Alien in Jack Spicer's Dictated Books 1982

Box 29, Folder 1

Haimsohn, George - Poetry 1948, undated

Box 29, Folder 2

Herndon, James - Poems undated

Box 29, Folder 3

Herndon, James - Memoir of Spicer undated

Box 29, Folder 4

Herndon, James - Le Royale 1957

Box 29, Folder 5

Hocther, W.B. - Poem 1949

Box 29, Folder 6

Hunt, Henry - Poems 1958, undated

Box 29, Folder 7

Hymes, Dell H. - Phonological Aspects of Style undated

Box 29, Folder 8

Johnson, Garth - Borderlines undated

Box 31, Folder 1-5

Jonas, Stephen - Poems 1956

Box 31, Folder 6-7

Jonas, Stephen - Poems 1957

Box 31, Folder 8

Jonas, Stephen - Poems 1958 January-June

Box 31, Folder 9-11

Jonas, Stephen - Poems 1958

Box 31, Folder 12

Jonas, Stephen - Jail Poems, Rewrites 1958, undated

Box 31, Folder 13

Jonas, Stephen - Part Five, Original Take: The Bust 1960

Box 31, Folder 14

Jonas, Stephen - Poems 1957, 1961-1962

Box 31, Folder 15

Jonas, Stephen 1960-1963

Box 31, Folder 16

Jonas, Stephen - The Chorus undated

Box 31, Folder 17

Jonas, Stephen - To Robin undated

Box 31, Folder 18

Jonas, Stephen - Miscellaneous Poems undated

Box 29, Folder 9

Laurance - Poem 1959

Box 29, Folder 10

Mackintosh, Graham - John Toilet Story undated

Box 29, Folder 11

Mallman, Jerome - The Salon undated

Box 29, Folder 12

Marshall, Ed and Jonas, Steve - Letters and Poems 1957-1958, undated

Box 29, Folder 13

McClure, Michael - Poems undated

Box 29, Folder 14

Miles, Josephine - Poem Saving the Bay 1966

Box 29, Folder 15

Neville, Tove - Jack Spicer Interview - Impressions from an 'Estranged' Poet 1965

Box 29, Folder 16

Neville, Tove - Poems [1965]

Box 29, Folder 17

Parkinson, Thomas - Poems and Paper W.B. Yeats' Revisions of 'The Countess Cathleen:' 1892-1911 1950, undated

Box 29, Folder 18

Persky, Stan 1966, undated

Box 29, Folder 19

Poetry as Magic Workshop undated

Box 29, Folder 20

Pop, Sever - Linguistic Articles ( Orbis: Bulletin International de Documentation Linguistique) 1952

Box 29, Folder 21

Primack, Ron - "For the late Horace Bell" (manuscript) undated

Box 29, Folder 22

Ryan, John - Poems 1961-1962

Box 29, Folder 23

Sherrod, T. - Poems undated

Box 29, Folder 24

Stanley, George - Poems 1957, undated

Box 29, Folder 25

Weir, Ruth - Linguistics Research, Formulation of Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence Rules to Aid in the Teaching of Reading 1964

Box 29, Folder 26

Current OPP (Other People's Poetry) 1959-1961

Box 30, Folder 1

Current Poetry 1962

Box 30, Folder 2

Drawings by Unknown Artist undated

Box 30, Folder 3

Miscellaneous MSS undated

Box 30, Folder 4-5

Miscellaneous Poems 1950, 1952, 1953, 1962, undated

Box 30, Folder 6

Poetry Magazines 1960, 1962, undated

 

Series 7 Personal Materials 1945-1978, undated

Physical Description: Box 32; Oversize Box 1, folder 2

Arrangement

This series is arranged hierarchically.

Scope and Content Note

This series consists of personal materials relating to Jack Spicer, including biographical and genealogical materials, photographs, financial records, miscellaneous publications and works.
Box 32, Folder 1

Letter to Editor - Spicer Tribute 1966 May 3

Box 32, Folder 2

Mathematical Notations undated

Box 32, Folder 3

Miscellaneous Images undated

Box 32, Folder 4

Miscellaneous Publications 1945-1965, undated

Box 32, Folder 5

Poetry Forum Announcement undated

Box 32, Folder 6

Spicer Biographical Materials 1967-1968, 1978

Box 32, Folder 7

Photograph - Spicer at Gallery "6" 1954

Box 32, Folder 8

Photograph - Spicer at Summer Camp undated

Box 32, Folder 9

Spicer, Nellie - Civil War widow undated

Box 32, Folder 10

Spicer Financial Records 1952, 1962, 1965

Box 32, Folder 11

L.W. Spicer Profile 1956 February

Box 32, Folder 12

Spicer Writing Checklist 1968, 1970

Box 32, Folder 13

Gentlemen's Magazines and Photos 1956-1957, undated

Oversize Box 1, Folder 2

Borregaard's Museum announcement undated