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Jack Spicer Quotes

A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer.

A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer.

Jack Spicer
Poet, Mechanic
Jack Spicer (2010). “My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.196, Wesleyan University Press

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.

Jack Spicer
Real, Rope, Use
Jack Spicer (2010). “My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.196, Wesleyan University Press

The dead are notoriously hard to satisfy.

Jack Spicer
Hard
Jack Spicer (2010). “My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.166, Wesleyan University Press

And I think that it is certainly possible that the objective universe can be affected by the poet. I mean, you recall Orpheus made the trees and the stones dance and so forth, and this is something which is in almost all primitive cultures. I think it has some definite basis to it. I'm not sure what. It's like telekinesis, which I know very well on a pinball machine is perfectly possible.

Jack Spicer
Mean, Thinking, Tree
Jack Spicer (2010). “The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer”, p.11, Wesleyan University Press

Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry. When someone intrudes into the poet's life (and any sudden personal contact, whether in the bed or in the heart, is an intrusion) the poet loses his or her balance for a moment, slips into being what he or she is, uses his or her poetry as one would 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 person.

Jack Spicer
Loneliness, Writing, Heart

At least we both know how shitty the world is. You wearing a beard as a mask to disguise it. I wearing my tired smile. I don't see how you do it. One hundred thousand university students marching with you. Toward A necessity which is not love but is a name.

Jack Spicer
Tired, University Students, Names
Jack Spicer, Peter Gizzi, Kevin Killian (2008). “My Vocabulary Did this to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.426, Wesleyan University Press

No love is Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries.

Jack Spicer
Ocean, Love Is, Sea
Jack Spicer, Peter Gizzi, Kevin Killian (2008). “My Vocabulary Did this to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.178, Wesleyan University Press

Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry.

Jack Spicer
Loneliness, Pure
Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser (1975). “The Collected Books of Jack Spicer”, Los Angeles : Black Sparrow Press

In hell it is difficult to tell people from other people.

Jack Spicer
People, Hell, Difficult
Jack Spicer (2010). “My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.374, Wesleyan University Press

The poet is stepping out of the airplane.

Jack Spicer
Airplane, Poet
Jack Spicer (2010). “My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.345, Wesleyan University Press

See how weak prose is.... Presently 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 and nothing will happen because we will be speaking in prose.

Jack Spicer
Two, Trying, Bars
Jack Spicer (2010). “My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.172, Wesleyan University Press

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