My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer

A LECTURE IN PRACTICAL AESTHETICS

A LECTURE IN PRACTICAL AESTHETICS Entering the room Mr. Stevens on an early Sunday morning Wore sailor-whites and helmet. He had brought a couple with him and they danced like bears He had brought a bottle with him and the vapors rose From helmet, naked bottle, couple Haloed him and wakened us. But Mr. Stevens, listen, sight and sense are dull And heavier than vapor and they cling And weigh with meaning. To floors and bottoms of the sea, horizon them You are an island of our sea, Mr. Stevens, perhaps rare Certainly covered with upgrowing vegetation. You may consist of dancing animals. The bear, Mr. Stevens, may be your emblem, Rampant on a white field or panting in plurals above the floor and the ocean, And you a bearish Demiurge, Mr. Stevens, licking vapor Into the shape of your island. Fiercely insular. Out of sense and sight, Mr. Stevens, you may unambiguously dance Buoying the helmet and the couple, The bottle and the dance itself— But consider, Mr. Stevens, though imperceptible, We are also alive. It is not right that you should merely touch us. Besides, Mr. Stevens, any island in our sea Needs a geographer. A geographer, Mr. Stevens, tastes islands Finds in this macro-cannibalism his own microcosm. To form a conceit, Mr. Stevens, in finding you Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 14 14 He chews upon his flesh. Chews it, Mr. Stevens, Like Donne down to the very bone. An island, Mr. Stevens, should be above such discoveries, Available but slightly mythological. Our resulting map will be misleading. Though it be drawn, Mr. Stevens, With the blood and flesh of both superimposed As ink on paper, it will be no picture, no tourist postcard Of the best of your contours reflected on water. It will be a map, Mr. Stevens, a county stiffened into symbols And that’s poetry too, Mr. Stevens, and I’m a geographer. DIALOGUE BETWEEN INTELLECT AND PASSION “Passion is alien to intellect As hot black doves are alien to trees On which they do not rest— All are alone. Of passion and of intellect Suspect Neither bird nor tree Of vicious privacy— Nothing is intimate. Doves without rest Must blackly test Each branch with every claw they lack And trees alone Are tough as thrones With too much sovereignty.” “Above your branches every hot black dove Protests his love Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 15 15 ...