The Red Wheelbarrow

by Jack Spicer

Rare poetry paperback chapbook by Jack Spicer.

Genres: Poetry

12 pages, chapbook

First published January 1, 1973

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]

A Red Wheelbarrow

Rest and look at this goddamned wheelbarrow. Whatever
It is. Dogs and crocodiles, sunlamps. Not
For their significance.
For their significance. For being human
The signs escape you. You, who aren't very bright
Are a signal for them. Not,
I mean, the dogs and crocodiles, sunlamps. Not
Their significance.



Love

Tender as an eagle it swoops down
Washing all our faces with its rought tongue.
Chained to a rock and in that rock, naked.
All of the faces.



Love II

You have clipped his wings. The marble
Exposes his wings clipped.
 "Dead on arrival":
You say before he arrives anywhere.
The marble, where his wings and our wings in similar fashion blossom. End-
Less.



Love III

Who pays attention to the music the stone makes
Each of them hearing its voice.
Each of them yells and it is an echo bouncing the stone hard.
Imprisoned in the stone the last of the stone, the last of the stone singing, its hard voice.



Love IV

There are no holds on the stone. It looks
Like a used-up piece of chewing gum removed fro all use because they left it. Naturally
It cannot afford to exist.
Without it I cannot afford to exist. Within
The black rock.



Love V

Never looking him in the eye once. All mythology
Is contained in this passage. Never to look him in the eye once. His exclusive right to be
Seen. That is the God in the stone
Who barely comes up to expectation.



Love VI

Hoot! The piercing screams of ghosts vanish on the horizon
I had come to the wrong place
Tall as a monster the shadow of the rock overwhelmed us
Nothing that the stone hears.



Love VII

Nothing in the rock hears nothing
The stone, empty as a teacup, tries to comfort,
The sky is filed with stars:
The wax figures of Ganymede, Prometheus, Eros
Hanging.



Love 8

Love ate the red wheelbarrow.

[Mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Jack Spicer's tongue-in-cheek response to William Carlos William's imagist poetry, especially his poem by the same name, The Red Wheelbarrow, to which Spicer directly refers. This small book of poems is not only a parody of Williams but also contains Spicer's signature surrealism, of which he was a master.

There were 525 copies of this book printed by Wesley Tanner in 1971. If you can pick up one of the rare 25 copies with a hand-coloured print by Tanner, they are well worth it.

Spicer is one of several geniuses (or is it genii?) to come out of that period. Even though their styles are radically different, his erstwhile friend and fellow poet, Robert Duncan, was equally talented but much more of a lyrical poet.

Spicer is too cynical to ever be lyrical. Instead, he goes for what he does best - surrealism as his best response to a troubled and crazy world. While I enjoyed these poems, they were a little obscure. For those of you who have never read Spicer, I encourage you to read his first book, After Lorca, which is absolutely brilliant.

[James Piss · Rating 4 out of 5]

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