Golem.

by Jack Spicer

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 - August 17, 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry.

Spicer was born in Los Angeles, where he later graduated from Fairfax High School in 1942, and attended the University of Redlands from 1943-45. He spent most of his writing-life in San Francisco and spent the years 1945 to 1950 and 1952 to 1955 at the University of California, Berkeley, where he began writing, doing work as a research-linguist, and publishing some poetry (though he disdained publishing). During this time he searched out fellow poets, but it was through his alliance with Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser that Spicer forged a new kind of poetry, and together they referred to their common work as the Berkeley Renaissance. The three, who were all gay, also educated younger poets in their circle about their "queer genealogy", Rimbaud, Lorca, and other gay writers.[1] Spicer's poetry of this period is collected in One Night Stand and Other Poems (1980). His Imaginary Elegies, later collected in Donald Allen's The New American Poetry 1945-1960 anthology, were written around this time.

In 1954, he co-founded the Six Gallery in San Francisco, which soon became famous as the scene of the October 1955 Six Gallery reading that launched the West Coast Beat movement.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

1.
 October 1, 1962

This is an ode to Horace Stoneham and Walter O'Malley.
Rottenness.
Who has driven me away from baseball like a fast car. Say
It isn't true Joe.
This is an ode to John Wieners and Auerhahn Press
Who have driven me away from poetry like a fast car. Say
It isn't true Joe. The fix
Has the same place in junkie-talk or real-talk
It is the position
They've got you in.
The Giants will have a National League playoff. Duncan
Will read his poems in Seattle.
Money (I forgot the story but the little boy after it all was
 over came up to Shoeless
Joe Jackson) Say it isn't true Joe.

I have seen the best poets and baseball plays of our
 generation caught in the complete and contemptible
 whoredom of capital society
Jack Johnson 
At last shaded the sun from his eyes
 . A fix
You become fixtures like light
Balls. Drug
Habit
Walter O'Malley, Horace Stonehame, do you suppose
 somebody fixed Pindar and the Olympic Games?


2.
 Golem, Written the Evening After Yom Kippur

Your life does not count. It is the rules of
 the tribe. No
Your life does not count.
Counting it all does not count. It is the rules
 of the tribe that your life doesn't count.
Numbering it doesn't count. Madness doesn't
 count.
Being mad at the numbers doesn't count.
It is a rule of the tribe (dead as they are)
 told over the dead campfires
That it doesn't count.
That your life doesn't count.
Countess Death give me Some life in this
 little plain we live in from start to finish
Let me slit their throats and smash their head on the
Stone.


3.

I met my death walking down Grant Avenue at
 four miles an hour.
She said, "I am your death."
I asked or I sort of asked, "Are you my doom?"
She didn't know Anglo-Saxon so she coyly
 repeated, "Isn't it enough that I am
 your death? What else should bother us?"
"Doom," I said. "Doom means judgement
 in Anglo-Saxon. The Priestess of the
 dead has a face like whey."
Whey is the liquid which is left after they
 spoon off the curds which are good with
 sugar. The dead do no know judgement.
I am writing this against the Great Mother
 that lives in the earth and in mysteries
 I am unable to repeat
Heroes take their doom. I will not face
My Death.


4.

Everything is fixed to a point
The death of a poet or a poem is
 fixed to a point. This House, that
Bank account, this Piece of paper
 on the floor. That Light that shines
 there instead of elsewhere.
Appealing to the better nature of
 things. Inventing angels.
Inventing angels. The light that
 that light shone shone there
 instead of elsewhere. Each 
 corner of the room fixed in
 an angle to itself.
The death of a poet or a poem or
 a Piece of paper. Things
Fix themselves.


5.

Give up. The Delphic oracle was
 fixed by the Persians. Pindar
Pindar.
Was a publicity man for some
 princess. Traded
For a couple of wrestlers and cash,
 Anger
Does not purify.
The very words I write
Do not purify. Are fixed in the
 language evolved by thousands 
 of generations of these princes -
 used mainly for commerce
 Meretriciousness.
Wrestler Plato tried to make 
 them all into stars. Stars
 are not what they are.
Coining a phrase our words are
Big-fake-twenty-dollar-gold-pieces.


6.

He died from killing himself.
 His public mask was broken
 because
He no longer had a public mask.
People retrieved his poems
 from wastebaskets. They had
Long hearts.
Oh, what a pain and shame was
 his passing
People returned to their
 business somewhat saddened.