Quotes from Jack Spicer

Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry.

A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer.

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

A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.

The English department of the spirit—that great quagmire that lurks at the bottom of all of us.

AimlesslyIt pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. NoOne listens to poetry.

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.

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.

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.

ANY FOOL CAN GET INTO AN OCEAN BUT IT TAKES A GODDESS TO GET OUT OF ONE.

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

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.

Aimlessly It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No One listens to poetry. — from "Thing Language

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.

The dead are notoriously hard to satisfy,

Beauty is so rare a th— Sing a new song Real Music A busted flush. A pain in the eyebrows. A Visiting card — from 15 False Propositions Against God [1958]

A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer.

Well Dennis you don't have to hear any of the mountain music they play here. Telling the young lies so that they can learn to get old. Favouring them with biscuits. "It's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville, declension on a three mile grade." In either case collision course. You either pick up the music or you don't.

Afscheid nemen van een geest is definitiever dan afscheid nemen van een geliefde. Zelfs de doden keren weer, maar een geest die, eens bemind, weggaat, keert nooit meer weer.

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises Tougher than anything. No one listens to poetry. The ocean Does not mean to be listened to. A drop Or crash of water. It means Nothing. It Is bread and butter Pepper and salt. The death That young men hope for. Aimlessly It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No One listens to poetry. — Jack Spicer, "This ocean, humiliating in its disguises," The Collected Books of Jack Spicer. (Black Sparrow Books; First Edition edition July 1975)

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises" This ocean, humiliating in its disguises Tougher than anything. No one listens to poetry. The ocean Does not mean to be listened to. A drop Or crash of water. It means Nothing. It Is bread and butter Pepper and salt. The death That young men hope for. Aimlessly It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No One listens to poetry.