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

THE UNVERT MANIFESTO AND OTHER PAPERS FOUND IN THE RARE BOOK ROOM OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY IN THE HANDWRITING OF OLIVER CHARMING. BY S.

THE UNVERT MANIFESTO AND OTHER PAPERS FOUND IN THE RARE BOOK ROOM OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY IN THE HANDWRITING OF OLIVER CHARMING. BY S.    1) An unvert is neither an invert or an outvert, a pervert or a convert, an introvert or a retrovert. An unvert chooses to have no place to turn. 2) One should always masturbate on street corners. 3) Unversion is the attempt to make the sexual act as rare as a rosepetal. It consists of linking the sexual with the greatest cosmic force in the universe—Nonsense, or as we prefer to call it, . 4) Sex should be a frightening experience like a dirty joke or an angel. 5) Dirty jokes and angels should be frightening experiences. 6) An unvert must not be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or autosexual. He must be metasexual. He must enjoy going to bed with his own tears. 7) Mertz! 8) All the universe is laughing at you. 9) Poetry, painting, and cocksucking are all attempts of the unvert to make God laugh. 10) The larger the Dada, the bigger the hole. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 74 74 11) Sidney Mertz was the only man ever arrested for drunken-driving of a steam locomotive. He is now the bartender of the American Legion bar in Jackson, Wyoming. 12) Jews and Negros are not allowed to be unverts. The Jew will never understand unversion and the Negro understands it too well. 13) An unvert only loves other unverts. He will, however, consent to perform an act of unversion with almost anything else except lovers and mountain lions. 14) God loves God. 15) Mertz must be applied to sex. People must learn to laugh into each other’s gonads. 16) God is an unvert. 17) Sex without love is better than love without sex. Sex without Mertz is never better than Mertz without sex. Nonsense is an act of friendship. 18) The larger the Dada, the bigger the hole. 19) Nonsense. Mertz, Dada, and God all go to the same nightclubs. 20) So does Graham Macarel.    ’  October 31, 1953: I must unvent someone named Graham Macarel. He should be about seventeen or eighteen and have a large Dada. I can use him as the hero and victim of my Mertzcycle . . . Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 75 75 November 5, 1953: Laughed all day. The elements of imagination are exhausting as Hell. November 23, 1953: It was more successful than I expected. He is beginning to become mythical. I saw him today and he told me that he is taking a course in his art school in which he has to clip examples of racial prejudice from Tarot cards and give their exact date. His art school’s name is the California School of Fine Flowers. His teacher’s name is S. We talked for a while and I am already beginning to destroy his universe. . . . Method is everything. December 1, 1953: Love must only be applied at the wrong time and in the wrong place. It must be thrown at the unsuspecting like a custard pie made of poison. . . . Nothing destroys Mertz more than custom. Nothing destroys it less than treason. December 7, 1953: I return to Graham Macarel. (Note—I must be sure to call him Mac. Graham reminds the uninformed imagination of crackers.) He has become a combination of a Boy Scout and a depth charge. He appeals to the primitive sources of nonsense and despair. I suspect that his teacher, S., is secretly an unvert—or at least a spoiled unvert. Something is going on between S. and history. I wonder if Mac realizes that an unvert is an agent of Kubla Khan. December 9, 1953: “An unvert is an angel of Kubla Khan.”—that’s what Mac said to me last night in the men’s room of the Palace Hotel. At the time he said it he was . . . which is certainly Dada if not Mertz. December 10, 1953: . . . suspects . . . Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 76 76 December 18, 1953: It is Christmas vacation at the California School of Fine Flowers. S. was in the bars last night, very drunk. I think he is planning to unvert somebody. December 19, 1953: I had a conversation with S. late last night. He was again very drunk. “Why did you have to invent Graham Macarel?” he asked me angrily...