The Clerk's Tale: Poems – An Exquisitely Restrained Literary Debut Shot Through with Longing

by Spencer Reece

In a recent double fiction issue, The New Yorker devoted the entire back page to a single poem, "The Clerk's Tale," by Spencer Reece. The poet who drew such unusual attention has a surprising background: for many years he has worked for Brooks Brothers, a fact that lends particular nuance to the title of his collection. The Clerk's Tale pays homage not only to Chaucer but to the clerks' brotherhood of service in the mall, where "the light is bright and artificial, / yet not dissimilar to that found in a Gothic cathedral." The fifty poems in The Clerk's Tale are exquisitely restrained, shot through with a longing for permanence, from the quasi-monastic life of two salesmen at Brooks Brothers to the poignant lingering light of a Miami dusk to the weight of geography on an empty Minnesota farm. Gluck describes them as having "an effect I have never quite seen before, half cocktail party, half passion play . . . We do not expect virtuosity as the outward form of soul-making, nor do we associate generosity and humanity with such sophistication of means, such polished intelligence . . . Much life has gone into the making of this art, much patient craft."

Genres: Poetry

65 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poet is a friend and knowing him as a person adds a different understanding of the tales he spins. Wonderfully done and worthy of the praise it has received.

[Bcoghill Coghill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Portions that resonated with me. It is a book I will revisit many times. Right now, I intended to reread Reece's second book again.

[Kali · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great first book of poems. I particularly liked the title poem and the "Florids Ghazals." Very well done.

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spencer Reece's style is rich and metaphor and allusion--indeed the title of the collection is a reference to both Reece's tenure at Brooks Brothers and to Chaucer--but Reece has an unusual gift for both stoic measure and dialogue to allow his poetry to portray a range of believable characters. Reece's use of form here is particularly effective, his several ghazals are particularly moving. While there are moments of this collection that seem a little too indebted to T.S. Eliot, it's a very beautiful and delicate collection of poems with profound observations about human interaction and the beauty in resignation.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, chilling collection of poems that are at times devotional, at times filled with melancholy and empty spaces. I was amused to find we went to the same high school - I know I am projecting when I say we share much in common. I admire his depictions of Minnesota. I too understand the beauty in the emptiness he depicts the nature in.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enigmatic, quietly riveting collection of poems. The ghazal sequences, sequence of “addresses”, and Reece’s mastery of simile and metaphor are what will keep bringing me back to this book.

[Aidan Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meticulously crafted, often moving collection from Spencer Reece (his first, actually). The poems are shot through with absence and loss and often read as fractured. Sometimes that effect left me feeling alienated from the poem, but sometimes it was heartrending, as in the poem "Interlude":

We are two men on a park bench
in Palm Beach oblivious to the two men

who start their truck with that boy
from the bar inside dragging him

in the dark to the fence strapping him
with a rope to a post in Laramie,

Wyoming, where he freezes and dies
over five days. My dear, it is late.

The Flagler Museum is shut.
Stay with me. Remain here with me.

This collection doesn't exude the sort of wonder at the beauty and brokenness of life that Reece's second collection does, and for that reason I didn't LOVE it, but I know I'll return to many of its poems again.

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of poetry introduce me to forms of poetry (like the ghazal) that I'd never heard of and now absolutely adore. It also contains such a perfect balance of straightforward, no-nonsense, little description poetry with the type of wonderful, flowing, ornate descriptions that I absolutely love and adore. Spencer Reece is an exquisite poet. The poem "Ghazals For Spring" is one of the best poems I have read in a very long time, despite how long it is. I really have to read more of this poet.

[Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the infamous 'back page of the New Yorker' poem, the one that was hyped, the one that got all the fancy back cover blurbs. It deserved it. The short version: His sense of place was impeccable and varied. His risky choice to include three ghazal sequences, based on the ancient Persian form, were riveting. Rare enough to feel it, so it should be mentioned: I loved everything about this book.

[Megan Doney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spencer Reece came to write and present at Lesley University when I was in my MFA program, and I loved his writing then. This is his first book of poems, and I'm still reading his latest collection. The complexity and loveliness of every image, whether it is animal, geographical, or emotional, is simply stunning.

[Jenni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best "first book" contest winner I've ever read. Classical style, emotional depth. Authentic voice.

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went to Spencer's reading earlier this month, and this is the best poetry I've heard/read in a long time.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classy, honest, focused. This book is one of my all time favorites. Reece has an amazing knack for inhabiting a place and offering it to the reader with obsessive poetic clarity.

[Stephanie Schultz · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite poem was Loxahatchee. It felt very different from the rest of the collection and was more deeply rooted in the natural world than in the narrator's self.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings about this collection. The things I liked I strongly liked. But the things that irked me strongly irked me.

My favourite poems in the collection are the poems that best demonstrate Reece's remarkable use of metaphor and simile. In fact, this is what I liked best about the poems in this collection: the poet's use of metaphor and simile. I haven't been as impressed by a poet's use of metaphor and simile since reading Karen Solie...

. . . Clothed
in low-rent autobiographies we slouch toward eviction
like dying brickwork.
- Karen Solie, "The Vandal Confesses" (Modern and Normal, pg. 42)

Hours clot. Bird flap like passports.
Fields explode with temper tantrums....
- Ghazals for Spring, ii (pg. 21)

The moon peels back her scalp, spreads her iconography -
the dirt shines, mechanically kneading the hours of our deaths.

Tra la la la. Lovers fling their arms open like medicine cabinets,
offering their baptized scalps to fun new people like thesauruses.
- Ghazals for Spring, v (pg. 24)

I'm irked by Reece's repeated use of the dated term "Indian". The poet is not using "Indian" in an academic or subversive context. The poet's use of "Indian" is commonplace, perpetuating the ignorance and insensitivity of other writers (typically white and male) who refuse to use terms such as First Nations and Native American...

perhaps they came after the Civil War?
It was a simple house. Two stories.
Six rooms. Every wall crooked.
Before the house, Indians camped there.
If you listened you could hear them.
- Then (pg. 12)

here in this swamp with the beautiful Indian name
I listen to the thousand thousand vows this world has made then broken
- Addresses, xvi. Loxahatchee (pg. 58)

I'm likewise irked by Reece's repeated references to Christianity. I'm not bashing Christianity, it's just not my bag. The poems in question therefore detracted from my enjoyment of the collection...

The heat pf the Midwest night fills with the hush of elms
weeping in the bluest of shadows,
their limbs cavernous as Jesus' limbs must have been...
- Diminuendo for Barney Bush (pg. 19)

Everybody lies, I guess, and usually it happens in spring,
when the sky plumes to a deep Jesusy blue.
- Ghazals for Spring, i (pg. 20)

My favourite passages from the collection...

I was often found, half asleep.
I forgot words, where I lived, my dreams.
Mirrors around the house, those streams,
ran out of gossip. The walls absorbed me.
There was every indication I was safe there.
- Then (pg. 13)

[Ence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t think of a new book of poetry I’ve liked more in years. Completely transfixed.

Favorites: Clerk’s Tale (A naked body, without pretense, is of no use./It grows late.), The Bat (myself—//a brochure of needs), The Cat (Love bores me// and sex I never did understand. Do you?), basically all of Ghazals for Spring but especially i (we twitched to rock music like sad viruses; everybody lies, i guess, and usually it happens in spring) ii (Hey you! Come unto me![] I’m due for a moist trembling emotion, don’t you think? Well, don’t you?; Last fall the lilac bushes wrote very convincing suicide notes, however now they appear to be staging a bawdy leg-kicking comeback: what to make of this?) vi (Ready your suitcases.), Ponies (Pleased to have your approval, I rarely spoke.), Interior (The old single female manager[] orders the salesman around. Each day he forgives her anew.), and good grief Morbidezza (your gorgeous middle aged torso yielding [] Have I added too many strokes? I want so much to make you real, to get it right.

Also, less liney, Florida Ghazals ii, vi, Minneapolis, Beverly Road, Boca Raton, Worth Avenue

HM to Cape Cod, for this opening howler: “Inside everything was Episcopalian”

Genuinely transported. Every poem had at least one genuinely shocking phrase. I want to eat them all.

[Berit · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been a long time since I read a poetry collection so magnificent and without false notes or dips in energy. Deeply moving, hurting, loving, and an unexpected poignancy with its visions of the Twin Cities.

Favorites: "Midnight," "Ponies," "Ghazals for Spring," "Tonight," "The Clerk's Tale."

"The muscular sky of Minnesota is more than I can fathom,
full of salmon-colored promises of just how expansive love can be..." (Autumn Song)

"...But if you look closely in the left-hand corner,
I can just be distinguished from the blue blue brilliance of all this land,
a tiny figure, no bigger than a grass blade, a shadow hugged by shadows,
heading home after a long walk nowhere,
encircled by a halo of rocks, trees, crops, rivers, clouds--
by every blessed thing conspiring together to save my life." (Midnight)

"You are being born. Feels good.
Something enormous kisses you.
[...] you do not know what I know [...]
[...] And so I say to you yes you:
Everyone's a fugitive. Everyone." (Tonight)

[CJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must revisit this again—overwhelmingly beautiful poems. How to place a place; address an address. How to hold the fractured pieces of history and time and light and people who pass through ghostly and transient in a site; how to assemble them in words. How to hold together so much loss, to graft words onto absence, to insist upon permanence in vain. So aching and vivid beautiful—Spencer Reece might be one of my favourite poets, almost instantly.

[Joseph Dante · Rating 4 out of 5]

Measured poems with a quiet dignity and strong sense of place. My favorites were the longer poems and his series of ghazals. I'm glad I discovered this poet - I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved these poems and recurring themes of place and impermanence. The Midwestern, Minnesota connections were wonderful.

[Dan Hendrickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t have this book any longer, but I still think about it. To me, good writing is capturing something that stays with you long after you’ve set the book aside. This collection does that.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Portofino" / "The Clerk's Tale" / "A Bestiary" / "Tonight" / "Midnight" / "Ghazals for Spring" / "Florida Ghazals" / "Addresses" / "Interlude" / "Morbidezza"

[John Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engaging and descriptive poems.

[Timothy Juhl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know I probably should find more to like in this debut collection of poetry, it won a couple of awards and the New Yorker devoted an entire back page to the title poem (which is the best piece in the collection).

It's very clear now that I'm drawn to more linear, narrative voices in poetry. Certainly, The Clerk's Tale (the poem) fits this frame, so too did 'Cape Cod', but much of the remaining poems, I'm sure lend to some sort of brilliance, but I found the voice and rhythm too repetitive and much of the collection simply felt unconnected.

[jojo Lazar · Rating 3 out of 5]

my current mentor whom i madly adore. i'm so excited for the work we're going to be doing after admiring him since '04...and he's having me do the craziest/greatest exercises...turning poems into menus and screenplay formats of dialogues...guh! LOVE IT. and everyone should read this. especially the 'bestiary' section...

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

His first book of poems, won the Breadmaker's prize or some such thing. Calls Deborah Keenan a savior. Reece was assistant manager at a Brooks Brothers in MOA, and the title poem chronicles that, as well as alludes to Chaucer. "Sometimes the snow falls like rice"-- this line actually made it into my dream one night. Good poems.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

An uncommonly virtuosic first book of poetry from a heretofore unheard of poet.

[Signe · Rating 5 out of 5]

read it cover to cover. read it again.

[Jana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh God so beautiful--and even better when he reads it. Gorgeous.

[Amanda Carver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even when Reece is writing about Florida, I feel like he takes me places I have never been.