My Vocabulary Did This to Me

Book excerpt: “An extraordinary collection . . . Like the work of Emily Dickinson and W. B. Yeats, Spicer’s poems still seem to come from somewhere else.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Winner of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Award for Poetry (2009) Winner of the American Book Award (2009) In 1965, when the poet Jack Spicer died at the age of forty, he left behind a trunkful of papers and manuscripts and a few copies of the seven small books he had seen to press. A West Coast poet, his influence spanned the national literary scene of the 1950s and ’60s, though in many ways Spicer’s innovative writing ran counter to that of his contemporaries in the New York School and the West Coast Beat movement. Now, more than forty years later, Spicer’s voice is more compelling, insistent, and timely than ever. During his short but prolific life, Spicer troubled the concepts of translation, voice, and the act of poetic composition itself. My Vocabulary Did This to Me is a landmark publication of this essential poet’s life work, and includes poems that have become increasingly hard to find and many published here for the first time. “One of the most important volumes of poetry published in the past 50 years. The poems are simply wonderful, and Spicer’s mature work is some of the best ever written by an American.” —Ron Silliman, author of N/O “You finish My Vocabulary Did This to Me feeling you’ve come in contact with an original artist and a genuine one . . . You also finish the book thinking that these poems are ready to find a new audience.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times