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A la manera de Lorca y otros poemas
Out of print for decades, this is the legendary American poet's tribute to Federico García Lorca, including translations of the great Spanish poet's work.
Jack Spicer was one of the outstanding figures of the mid-twentieth-century San Francisco Renaissance, bent on fashioning a visionary new lyricism. Spicer called his poems "dictations," and they combine outrageous humor, acid intelligence, brilliant wordplay, and sheer desolation to incandescent effect.
"Frankly I was quite surprised when Mr. Spicer asked me to write an introduction to this volume," writes the dead Federico García Lorca at the start of After Lorca, Spicer's first book and one that, since it originally appeared in 1957, has exerted a powerful influence on poetry in America and abroad. "It must be made clear at the start that these poems are not translations," Lorca continues. "In even the most literal of them Mr. Spicer seems to derive pleasure in inserting or substituting one or two words which completely change the mood and often the meaning of the poem as I had written it. More often he takes one of my poems and adjoins to half of it another of his own, giving rather the effect of an unwilling centaur. (Modesty forbids me to speculate which end of the animal is mine.) Finally there are an almost equal number of poems that I did not write at all (one supposes that they must be his)." What so puzzles Lorca continues to delight and inspire readers of poetry today.
Jack Spicer was one of the outstanding figures of the mid-twentieth-century San Francisco Renaissance, bent on fashioning a visionary new lyricism. Spicer called his poems "dictations," and they combine outrageous humor, acid intelligence, brilliant wordplay, and sheer desolation to incandescent effect.
"Frankly I was quite surprised when Mr. Spicer asked me to write an introduction to this volume," writes the dead Federico García Lorca at the start of After Lorca, Spicer's first book and one that, since it originally appeared in 1957, has exerted a powerful influence on poetry in America and abroad. "It must be made clear at the start that these poems are not translations," Lorca continues. "In even the most literal of them Mr. Spicer seems to derive pleasure in inserting or substituting one or two words which completely change the mood and often the meaning of the poem as I had written it. More often he takes one of my poems and adjoins to half of it another of his own, giving rather the effect of an unwilling centaur. (Modesty forbids me to speculate which end of the animal is mine.) Finally there are an almost equal number of poems that I did not write at all (one supposes that they must be his)." What so puzzles Lorca continues to delight and inspire readers of poetry today.
217 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
6 people are currently reading
261 people want to read
About the author
Jack Spicer
56 books80 followersJack 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
December 19, 2025
and i will again become your special comrade
April 4, 2023
"Poor Narcissus
My sorrow
Self of my sorrow" (p.39)
Jack Spicer, my LOVE!! This is for lovers of O'Hara who want more!
My sorrow
Self of my sorrow" (p.39)
Jack Spicer, my LOVE!! This is for lovers of O'Hara who want more!
November 22, 2024
“loneliness is necessary for pure poetry.”
February 6, 2025
An excellent exploration of what poetry and translation can really be. I really loved his kind of radical approach to the act of translation as a correspondence between the author and the translator, not as a direct, mechanical connection. He sees Lorca as a friend, and the poetry Spicer writes are hybrid pieces that Spicer has translated and rewritten himself. A friendship as a metaphor for translation is perfect, and justifies Spicer’s somewhat taboo practice of “cannibalizing” Lorca’s poetry to create something new- the product of a friendship, a warm, joint creation, rather than (in the frame of this “friendship) a detached collection of directly translated poems that have been carried across languages at an arm’s length. Yes, you CAN put yourself wayyyy into an author’s work when you’re translating. The poems inevitably have the essence of Lorca in them, they would not be the way they are if Spicer had chosen to write all this poetry completely by himself. This is a completely valid translation in its own right and it’s super inspiring.
October 17, 2018
Revolutionary, iconoclastic, singular and simply brilliant.
I am officially converted. I can't believe it's taken me as long as 4 years to pick up a book by Jack Spicer, a poet I discovered a few years ago.
He has to be one of the most important American poets of the 20th Century, hands down.
This is is his first book of poetry, typed up by a friend and another great poet, Robert Duncan.
This book is a mixture of imaginary letters to Garcia Lorca (and in this way he pays homage to the great man, obviously a source of much poetic inspiration), original poems by Spicer, some of Spicer's views on poetics (contained in the pseudo-letters) and some weird absurdist plays about Buster Keaton which were very whacky and did not make much sense to me.
The poetry in this book is really TOP NOTCH - Spicer sets the bar VERY high for not only his contemporaries but for ALL poets. Although, as he points out in the book (and he is quite right) it's not a competition and we shouldn't go around trying to emulate or copy other poet's styles. Spicer says some interesting things about prose being a focus on invention while poetry is about disclosing. I think I know what he means but I slightly disagree because prose can disclose as well.
Overall, this is an incredible first book of poems by anyone. I'm lucky to own an original first-edition of this book, which are hard to come by. There were several reprints and bootleg editions, all of which would be fine because it's the words found herein that matter the most. Read Spicer and if you are into poetry at all like me, you'll come out of the experience changed forever.
I am officially converted. I can't believe it's taken me as long as 4 years to pick up a book by Jack Spicer, a poet I discovered a few years ago.
He has to be one of the most important American poets of the 20th Century, hands down.
This is is his first book of poetry, typed up by a friend and another great poet, Robert Duncan.
This book is a mixture of imaginary letters to Garcia Lorca (and in this way he pays homage to the great man, obviously a source of much poetic inspiration), original poems by Spicer, some of Spicer's views on poetics (contained in the pseudo-letters) and some weird absurdist plays about Buster Keaton which were very whacky and did not make much sense to me.
The poetry in this book is really TOP NOTCH - Spicer sets the bar VERY high for not only his contemporaries but for ALL poets. Although, as he points out in the book (and he is quite right) it's not a competition and we shouldn't go around trying to emulate or copy other poet's styles. Spicer says some interesting things about prose being a focus on invention while poetry is about disclosing. I think I know what he means but I slightly disagree because prose can disclose as well.
Overall, this is an incredible first book of poems by anyone. I'm lucky to own an original first-edition of this book, which are hard to come by. There were several reprints and bootleg editions, all of which would be fine because it's the words found herein that matter the most. Read Spicer and if you are into poetry at all like me, you'll come out of the experience changed forever.
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June 7, 2022“[...]Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection—as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the street, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, “See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!” What does one do with all this crap?
Words are what sticks to the real. We use them to push the real, to drag the real into the poem. They are what we hold on with, nothing else. They are as valuable in themselves as rope with nothing to be tied to.
I repeat—the perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.”
“If your hand had been meaningless
Not a single blade of grass
Would spring from the earth’s surface.
Easy to write, to kiss—
No, I said, read your paper.
Be there
Like the earth
When shadow covers the wet grass.”
Words are what sticks to the real. We use them to push the real, to drag the real into the poem. They are what we hold on with, nothing else. They are as valuable in themselves as rope with nothing to be tied to.
I repeat—the perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.”
“If your hand had been meaningless
Not a single blade of grass
Would spring from the earth’s surface.
Easy to write, to kiss—
No, I said, read your paper.
Be there
Like the earth
When shadow covers the wet grass.”
July 18, 2020
Muy, muy chingón y como diría mi Pata (que me lo recomendó), locazo.
March 29, 2024
Dios bendito que precioso poemario! Me pareció muy divertido el juego de intentar adivinar cuales poemas son traducciones y cuales apócrifos. Además las cartas que le escribe a Federico son tan lindas. ME ENCANTÓ!!!!!!
December 20, 2024
It’s a perfect collection, Spicer’s poetic sensibilities are exactly what I want to see on the page. The letters to the deceased Lorca elevate this book beyond “good collection of poetry” — instead it serves as a linguistic monument to the fact that poetry can’t live alone anymore than we can.
October 23, 2024
“Words are what sticks to the real” I am OBSESSED
November 20, 2024
i want to talk to his ghost! it’s my turn!
March 25, 2025
Lorca’s poems? Mic drop
Spicer’s? Where’s the bathroom
Spicer’s? Where’s the bathroom
January 18, 2022
In the introduction, by Federico Garcia Lorca himself (more likely written by Spicer, considering Lorca, in 1957, had been dead 21 years, something Spicer, or whomever authored the introduction, alludes to - "The dead are notoriously hard to satisfy" - and offers something in the way of any explanation - "The cartoon showed a gravestone on which were inscribed the words: 'HERE LIES AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN.' The caption below it read: 'I wonder how they happened to be buried in the same grave?'"), it is stipulated that "these poems are not translations. In even the most literal of them Mr. Spicer seems to derive pleasure in inserting or substituting one or two words which completely change the mood and often the meaning of the poem as I had written it. More often he takes one of my poems and adjoins to half of it another half of his own, giving rather the effect of an unwilling centaur."
Having read Lorca, although not extensively, I was equally pleased by the poems I recognized and the poems I didn't, the poems I was reading for the first time. In Spicer's interpretations of Lorca's poems, there is the same freshness whether I had read them before or not. Each of the poems is dedicated to someone of note: Donald Allen, Marianne Moore... One of the poems is even dedicated to Jack Spicer...
In addition, Spicer includes letters to Lorca, in which he transcends the personal and meditates/reflects on the nature of poetry...
My favourite part of After Lorca is the inclusion of Lorca's play "Buster Keaton's Ride"...
In addition to "Buster Keaton's Ride", After Lorca includes a second play (a so-called sequel, although I didn't know any sequel existed... perhaps another of Spicer's liberties...) "Buster Keaton Rides Again: A Sequel" dedicated to "The Big Cat Up There" (a reference to Lorca's "When Five Years Pass"?)...
Having read Lorca, although not extensively, I was equally pleased by the poems I recognized and the poems I didn't, the poems I was reading for the first time. In Spicer's interpretations of Lorca's poems, there is the same freshness whether I had read them before or not. Each of the poems is dedicated to someone of note: Donald Allen, Marianne Moore... One of the poems is even dedicated to Jack Spicer...
A green boat
Fishing in blue water
The gulls circle the pier
Calling their hunger
A wind rises from the west
Like the passing of desire
Two boys play on the beach
Laughing
Their gangling legs cast shadows
On the wet sand
Then,
Sprawling in the boat
A beautiful black fish.
- Aquatic Park, A Translation for Jack Spicer
In addition, Spicer includes letters to Lorca, in which he transcends the personal and meditates/reflects on the nature of poetry...
Dear Lorca,
These letters are to be as temporary as our poetry is to be permanent. They will establish the bulk, the wastage that my sour-stomached contemporaries demand to help them swallow and digest the pure word. We will use up our rhetoric here so that it will not appear in our poems. Let it be consumed paragraph by paragraph, day by day, until nothing of it is left in our poetry and nothing of our poetry is left in it. It is precisely because these letters are unnecessary that they must be written.
In my last letter I spoke of the tradition. The fools that read these letters will think by this we mean what tradition seems to have meant lately - an historical patchwork (whether made up of Elizabethan quotations, guide books of the poet's home town, or obscure hints of obscure bits of magic published by Pantheon) which is used to cover up the nakedness of the bare word. Tradition means much more than that. It means telling the same story, writing the same poem, gaining and losing something with each transformation - but, of course, never really losing anything. This has nothing to do with calmness, classicism, temperament, or anything else. Invention is merely the enemy of poetry.
See how weak prose is. I invent a word like invention. These paragraphs could be translated, transformed by a chain of fifty poets in fifty languages, and they still would be temporary, untrue, unable to yield the substance of a single image. Prose invents - poetry discloses.
A mad man is talking to himself in the room next to mine. He speaks in prose. Preently I shall go to a bar and there one or two poets will speak to me and I to them and we will try to destroy each other or attract each other or even listen to each other and nothing will happen because we will be speaking in prose. I will go home, drunken and dissatisfied, and sleep - and my dreams will be prose. Even the subconscious is not patient enough for poetry.
You are dead and the dead are very patient.
Love,
Jack
My favourite part of After Lorca is the inclusion of Lorca's play "Buster Keaton's Ride"...
ROOSTER: Cockledoodledoo!
(Buster Keaton enters carrying four children in his arms.)
BUSTER KEATON (takes out a wooden dagger and kills them): My poor children!
ROOSTER: Cockledoodledoo!
BUSTER KEATON (counting the corpses on the ground): One, two, three, four. (Grabs a bicycle and goes.)
(Among the old rubber tires and cans of gasoline a Negro eats a straw hat.)
BUSTER KEATON: What a beautiful afternoon!
(A parrot flutters around in the sexless sky.)
BUSTER KEATON: : I like riding a bicycle.
THE OWL: Toowit toowoo.
BUSTER KEATON: How beautiful these birds sing!
THE OWL: Hoo!
BUSTER KEATON: It's lovely!
(Pause. Buster Keaton ineffably crosses the rushes and little fields of rye. The landscape shortens itself beneath the wheels of his machine. The bicycle has a single dimension. It is able to enter books and to expand itself even into operas and coalmines. The bicycle of Buster Keaton does not have a riding seat of caramel or sugar pedals like the bicycle bad men ride. It is a bicycle like all bicycles except for a unique drenching of innocence. Adam and Eve run by, frightened as if they were carrying a vase full of water and, in passing, pet the bicycle of Buster Keaton.)
BUSTER KEATON: Ah, love, love!
(Buster Keaton falls to the ground. The bicycle escapes him. It runs behind two enormous gray butterflies. It skims madly half an inch from the ground.)
BUSTER KEATON: I don't want to talk. Won'd somebody please say something?
A VOICE: Fool!
(He continues walking. His eyes, infinite and sad like a newly born animal, dream of lilies and angels and silken belts. His eyes which are like the bottom of a vase. His eyes of a mad child. Which are most faithful. Which are most beautiful. The eyes of an ostrich. His human eyes with a secure equipoise with melancholy. Philadelphia is seen in the distance. The inhabitants of that city now know that the old poem of a Singer machine is able to encircle the big roses of the greenhouse but not at all to comprehend the poetic difference between a bowl of hot tea and a bowl of cold tea. Philadelphia shines in the distance.)
(An American girl with eyes of celluloid comes through the grass.)
THE AMERICAN: Hello.
(Buster Keaton smiles and looks at the shoes of the girl. Those shoes! We do not have to admire her shoes. It would take a crocodile to wear them.)
BUSTER KEATON: I would have liked -
THE AMERICAN (breathless): Do you carry a sword decked with myrtle leaves?
(Buster Keaton shrugs his shoulders and lifts his fight foot.)
THE AMERICAN: Do you have a ring with a poisoned stone?
(Buster Keaton twists slowly and lifts an inquiring leg.)
THE AMERICAN: Well?
(Four angels with wings of a heavenly gas balloon piss among the flowers. The ladies of the town play a piano as if they were riding bicycles. The waltz, a moon, and seventeen Indian canoes rock the precious heart of our friend. As the greatest of surprised of all, autumn has invaded the garden like water explodes a geometrical clump of sugar.)
BUSTER KEATON (sighing): I would have liked to have been a swan. But I can't do what I would have liked. Because - What happened to my hat? Where is my collar of little birds and my mohair necktie? What a disgrace!
(A young girl with a wasp waist and a high collar comes in on a bicycle. She has the head of a nightingale.)
YOUNG GIRL: Whom do I have the honor of saluting?
BUSTER KEATON (with a bow): Buster Keaton.
(The young girl faints and falls off the bicycle. Her legs on the ground tremble like two agonized cobras. A gramophone plays a thousand versions of the same song - "In Philadelphia they have no nightingales".)
BUSTER KEATON (kneeling): Darling Miss Eleanor, pardon me! (lower) Darling (lower still) Darling (lowest) Darling.
(The lights of Philadelphia flicker and go out in the faces of a thousand policemen.)
- Buster Keaton's Ride
In addition to "Buster Keaton's Ride", After Lorca includes a second play (a so-called sequel, although I didn't know any sequel existed... perhaps another of Spicer's liberties...) "Buster Keaton Rides Again: A Sequel" dedicated to "The Big Cat Up There" (a reference to Lorca's "When Five Years Pass"?)...
BUSTER KEATON (entering a long dark corridor): This must be Room 73.
PIGEON: Sir, I am a pigeon.
BUSTER KEATON (taking a dictionary out of his back pocket): I don't understand what anybody is talking about.
(No one rides by on a bicycle. The corridor is quite silent.)
PIGEON: I have to go to the bathroom.
BUSTER KEATON: In a minute.
(Two chambermaids come by carrying towels. They give one to the pigeon and one to Buster Keaton.)
1ST CHAMBERMAID: Why do you suppose human beings have lips?
2ND CHAMBERMAID: Nothing like that entered my head.
BUSTER KEATON: No. There were supposed to be three chambermaids.
(He takes out a chessboard and begins playing upon it.)
PIGEON: I could love you if I were a dove.
BUSTER KEATON (biting the chessboard): When I was a child I was put in hail for not giving information to the police.
3RD CHAMBERMAID: Yes.
BUSTER KEATON: I am not a Catholic.
PIGEON: Don't you believe that God died?
BUSTER KEATON (crying): No.
(4 Spanish dancers come in. They are mostly male.)
1ST SPANISH DANCER: I have a little magazine up my ass.
4TH CHAMBERMAID: Oh!
(Buster Keaton forget his politeness and becomes a Catholic. He takes mass, says Holy Mary Mother of God, and distributes rosaries to all the policemen in the room. He hangs by his heels from a crucifix.)
VIRGIN MARY (coming in abruptly) Buster Keaton you have bumped The Car.
BUSTER KEATON: No.
(Alcohol comes in wearing the disguise of a cockroach. It is blue. It crawls silently up Buster Keaton's leg.)
BUSTER KEATON: No.
(Alcohol and the Virgin Mary perform a dance. They both pretend to have been lovers.)
BUSTER KEATON: I will never see either of you in Rockland. I am not going to Rockland.
(He takes the chessboard and invents a new alphabet.)
VIRGIN MARY: Holy Mary Mother of God Pray For Us Sinners Now At The Hour Of Our Death.
ALCOHOL: Dada is as dada does.
VIRGIN MARY: Did. (She falls into a blue robe.)
BUSTER KEATON: I wonder if there is anything but love in the universe.
(Suddenly, at the last possible time before the curtain falls, somebody kisses the Virgin Mary, and Buster Keaton, and everybody.)
ALCOHOL: If I weren't tone-deaf I would sing.
BUSTER KEATON (sadly): I announce a new world.
(Three literary critics disguised as chambermaids bring down the curtain. Buster Keaton, bleeding, breaks through the curtain. He stands in the middle of the stage holding a fresh pomegranate in his arms.)
BUSTER KEATON (even more sadly): I announce the death of Orpheus.
(Everyoen comes in. Policemen, waitresses, and Irene Tavener. They perform a complicated symbolic dance. Alcohol nibbles at the legs of every dancer.)
BUSTER KEATON (bleeding profusely): I love you. I love you. (As a last effort he throws the bleeding pomegranate from his heart.) No kidding, I love you.
VIRGIN MARY (taking him into her arms): You have bumped the car.
(The gaudy blue curtain, silent and alive like the mouth of a seagull, covers everything.)
- Buster Keaton Rides Again: A Sequel
August 11, 2023
"saying goodbye to a ghost is more final than saying goodbye to a lover. even the dead returns, but a ghost, once loved, departing will never reappear."
January 26, 2015
The entire text of this, Spicer's first published collection, is contained in the new-ish My Vocabulary Did This To Me. I also read through the first section of that book which is a number of poems he referred to as "one night stands," i.e. poems that are not connected to any other poem. His aesthetic, style, eventually turned to series of poems that were not sequential, but were related thematically, that riffed on a central conceit. After Lorca is a collection of letters he wrote to the deceased poet of the title as well (as well as introduction that imagines Lorca's response to this project). The poems are loose translations of Lorca's work. Each poem/translation is dedicated to another poet or artist in Spicer's circle. While I'm impressed with the result, and admire Spicer's brio, I find his verse a bit flat and repetitive. Especially his use of recurrent images/symbals (e.g., angels, trees, birds). If I get through the rest of the collected poems(Vocabularly) I'll delete this review and incorporate it into a review of that book.
March 4, 2019
Spicer's letters to Lorca were probably my favourite part of this, although I did end up warming up to the poems over time, some of which were amazing as a whole. This is one of those texts that, once you sit down and discuss it or even just contemplate it alone after finishing, you'll appreciate all the more than simply reading and putting it away.
June 13, 2022
brief and absolutely breathtaking
June 26, 2018
L'ambiente è intimo: quattro persone sono rivolte verso l'ingresso della libreria Modo Infoshop di via Mascarella, altre otto gli danno le spalle guardando dalla parte opposta. Si parla di Jack Spicer, uno dei più grandi poeti americani della seconda metà del secolo scorso, per lo più sconosciuto in Italia.
Dapprima si respira un po' di imbarazzo, ma dopo poco la lettura di alcune liriche scioglie la tensione: il lessico è sfrontato, i suoni stridono, le ambiguità provocano. Chi è Jack Spicer? Difficile da dirsi, sicuramente un uomo controcorrente, tanto in letteratura quanto nella vita: da una parte fu sempre refrattario ai dettami artistici di Auden e dall'altra inficiò la sua carriera accademica rifiutandosi di giurare fedeltà agli Stati Uniti.
«Ginsberg, la beat generation erano pop e noi avevamo già Janis Joplin per quello, Spicer era un coterie author, come si dice: di nicchia? Sì, noi volevamo leggere questo». Nelle parole di Paul Vangelisti, poeta contemporaneo e traduttore statunitense, sembra di vedere davvero il clima intellettuale della west-coast, l'America degli anni '50, il maccartismo, la corsa allo spazio; sembra una conversazione con il passato, con un poeta defunto.
D'altronde, è così che la raccolta After Lorca inizia: con una introduzione fittizia scritta da Jack Spicer che si finge Garcìa Lorca, anzi, da Jack Spicer che si crede Garcìa Lorca. Questa prefazione si fa però tutt'altro che semplice gioco letterario o l'ennesimo dialogo coi morti, è un manifesto di poetica che si nasconde sotto un'autoironia massacrante. "Garcia Spicer", infatti, dichiara che il suo libro non è esclusivamente di traduzioni, ma che «il Signore Spicer sembra trarre piacere nell'inserire o sostituire una o due parole che cambiano completamente il tono e spesso il significato della poesia», o che Spicer ha tradotto poesie di Lorca "scritte dopo la sua morte"; la raccolta si fa dunque intersoggettiva e marcatamente post-moderna, l'Io poetico perde completamente confini identitari facendosi solo "una ricetrasmittente per marziani" (come si definiva lo stesso Spicer).
Il libro è dunque un mondo aperto e Andrea Franzoni coglie l'occasione per complicare ulteriormente il gioco di specchi e riflessi sovrapponendo la propria personalità poetica in una delle prime traduzioni italiane dell'opera spiceriana, pubblicata con la casa editrice bolognese ARGO.
Le parole di Franzoni disegnano uno Spicer militante che crede in una poesia come mezzo per fare la differenza, una poesia sporca pertanto, che lascia alle spalle la pulizia metrica e la perfezione formale e si voce del proprio tempo, con intelligenza, arguzia, gioco linguisitico che non è mai soggettivismo intellettuale.
Dunque, perché tradurre Spicer oggi? Perché è un poeta che abbassa la poesia all'altezza del lettore e desacralizzandola le dà nuova vita. Perché è un poeta della differenza, artistica, politica, sessuale. Perché è un poeta del reale e come egli stesso scrive «ciò che è reale, suppongo, durerà».
Dapprima si respira un po' di imbarazzo, ma dopo poco la lettura di alcune liriche scioglie la tensione: il lessico è sfrontato, i suoni stridono, le ambiguità provocano. Chi è Jack Spicer? Difficile da dirsi, sicuramente un uomo controcorrente, tanto in letteratura quanto nella vita: da una parte fu sempre refrattario ai dettami artistici di Auden e dall'altra inficiò la sua carriera accademica rifiutandosi di giurare fedeltà agli Stati Uniti.
«Ginsberg, la beat generation erano pop e noi avevamo già Janis Joplin per quello, Spicer era un coterie author, come si dice: di nicchia? Sì, noi volevamo leggere questo». Nelle parole di Paul Vangelisti, poeta contemporaneo e traduttore statunitense, sembra di vedere davvero il clima intellettuale della west-coast, l'America degli anni '50, il maccartismo, la corsa allo spazio; sembra una conversazione con il passato, con un poeta defunto.
D'altronde, è così che la raccolta After Lorca inizia: con una introduzione fittizia scritta da Jack Spicer che si finge Garcìa Lorca, anzi, da Jack Spicer che si crede Garcìa Lorca. Questa prefazione si fa però tutt'altro che semplice gioco letterario o l'ennesimo dialogo coi morti, è un manifesto di poetica che si nasconde sotto un'autoironia massacrante. "Garcia Spicer", infatti, dichiara che il suo libro non è esclusivamente di traduzioni, ma che «il Signore Spicer sembra trarre piacere nell'inserire o sostituire una o due parole che cambiano completamente il tono e spesso il significato della poesia», o che Spicer ha tradotto poesie di Lorca "scritte dopo la sua morte"; la raccolta si fa dunque intersoggettiva e marcatamente post-moderna, l'Io poetico perde completamente confini identitari facendosi solo "una ricetrasmittente per marziani" (come si definiva lo stesso Spicer).
Il libro è dunque un mondo aperto e Andrea Franzoni coglie l'occasione per complicare ulteriormente il gioco di specchi e riflessi sovrapponendo la propria personalità poetica in una delle prime traduzioni italiane dell'opera spiceriana, pubblicata con la casa editrice bolognese ARGO.
Le parole di Franzoni disegnano uno Spicer militante che crede in una poesia come mezzo per fare la differenza, una poesia sporca pertanto, che lascia alle spalle la pulizia metrica e la perfezione formale e si voce del proprio tempo, con intelligenza, arguzia, gioco linguisitico che non è mai soggettivismo intellettuale.
Dunque, perché tradurre Spicer oggi? Perché è un poeta che abbassa la poesia all'altezza del lettore e desacralizzandola le dà nuova vita. Perché è un poeta della differenza, artistica, politica, sessuale. Perché è un poeta del reale e come egli stesso scrive «ciò che è reale, suppongo, durerà».
June 1, 2022
“Dear Lorca, Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry. When someone intrudes into the poets life … he loses his balance for a moment, slips into being who he is, uses his poetry as one we use money or sympathy. The person who writes the poetry emerges, tentatively, like a hermit crab from a conch shell. The poet, for that instant, ceases to be a dead man.”
So one of Jack Spicer’s letters to the [very dead] Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca begins. Poetry, Jack suggests, is made possible by colluding with the dead, and exists outside the things of this world. The book, After Lorca, is a mix of translations, quasi-translations, and flat out original poems masquerading as translations of Lorca’s work. They are correspondences — they create an intimacy between people far away. Slim, sly, and spicy, After Lorca is an imaginative volume of verse that I picked up during a recent trip to San Francisco.
So one of Jack Spicer’s letters to the [very dead] Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca begins. Poetry, Jack suggests, is made possible by colluding with the dead, and exists outside the things of this world. The book, After Lorca, is a mix of translations, quasi-translations, and flat out original poems masquerading as translations of Lorca’s work. They are correspondences — they create an intimacy between people far away. Slim, sly, and spicy, After Lorca is an imaginative volume of verse that I picked up during a recent trip to San Francisco.
October 30, 2025
this is so wonderful and so wide and it feels like discovering lorca all over again. i appreciate what spicer does to straddle the line between writing and translating poetry, i am very into his choice to lean more towards lorca’s early poetry (which i am also quite fond of), & he is maybe the person who’s gotten the closest to rendering how lorca’s poetry feels to me personally in english (see: there might be room for a thousand violins in the palm of my hand , among many other moments). overall really really awesome! i love poets drawing on other poets and i love translation and i love when you love a poet so much you want to resurrect him to talk to you and through you about poetry.
the sky has coastlines where life can be avoided / and some bodies must not repeat themselves at sunrise
the sky has coastlines where life can be avoided / and some bodies must not repeat themselves at sunrise
September 18, 2024
spare, pure poems!!! the moon!!! he's right in all his letters, which are beautiful!!! grand and small at the same time
"prose invents - poetry discloses"
"a really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary" - it's basically reality
wikipedia says he hated publishing which is so cool. loved his letter about (how hard it is) sharing poetry w ppl:
"When you are in love there is no real problem. The person you love is always interested because he knows that the poems are always about him... I may not be a better poet when I am in love, but I am a far less frustrated one. My poems have an audience."
literature beyond authors, where the authors are dead even when they're living
"prose invents - poetry discloses"
"a really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary" - it's basically reality
wikipedia says he hated publishing which is so cool. loved his letter about (how hard it is) sharing poetry w ppl:
"When you are in love there is no real problem. The person you love is always interested because he knows that the poems are always about him... I may not be a better poet when I am in love, but I am a far less frustrated one. My poems have an audience."
literature beyond authors, where the authors are dead even when they're living
March 26, 2025
I love the concept of this playful, devious tribute from one poet to another, espousing one's own work as translations (and sometimes a hazy middle between translation and creation [the only place that translation ever is?]) but it is a sliiiight indictment that I enjoyed the letters written 'between' Lorca and Spicer far more than the poetry itself. Perhaps its just a credit to how good the letters are considering the poetry is still pretty good!
March 5, 2025
“I have become lost many times along the ocean/
Like I lose myself in the hearts of some boys.”
blessed and highly favored to be in the poetic genealogy of Spicer and García Lorca. Spicer’s interpretative “cannibalized” translation inspires me to move with lyrical imagery and not worry about connections. the lemon smells the same everywhere, though the lemon trees may all be different
Like I lose myself in the hearts of some boys.”
blessed and highly favored to be in the poetic genealogy of Spicer and García Lorca. Spicer’s interpretative “cannibalized” translation inspires me to move with lyrical imagery and not worry about connections. the lemon smells the same everywhere, though the lemon trees may all be different
February 24, 2023
Some really interesting poems--unique concepts with really concrete language as well as layered symbolism. One of my favorite was probably page 54, Ballard of Escape, it was one that resonated with me a lot. Overall, it was not my favorite text but it was a pretty interesting collection of poems.
October 25, 2024
this is spicer's love letter to lorca - a composition of prose but mostly poetry, a composition probably written while he was drunk to be honest. but it is brilliant, sharp, and very very confusing. in conclusion, i love it.
July 31, 2021
Top notch poetry, basically a must-read for aspiring soon-to-be poets.
May 30, 2022
Love this so much!
May 17, 2024
A Perfect Book
“The universe falls apart and discloses a diamond” (21)
“A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary” (24)
“The universe falls apart and discloses a diamond” (21)
“A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary” (24)
May 18, 2024
i wanna be a witch
October 29, 2024
I liked it
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