Jack Spicer - Lament for the Maker - First printing - As new - 1971

This rare book is in perfect condition, As New Aloes Books, London, 1971. [16] pp. Stapled wrappers. Contains the poems "Dover Beach," "The Birds," "The Birth of Venus," "Lament for the Makers," and "Postscript." Originally published by White Rabbit Press in 1962 Jack Spicer (1925 – 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry. He spent most of his writing life in San Francisco. Together with his friends Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser, Spicer set out to create a new kind of poetry, drawing inspiration from earlier gay writers such as Lorca and Rimbaud and tapping into his studies of contemporary linguistics. Spicer co-founded the Six Gallery in San Francisco, where in 1955 the Beat Generation made their first major public appearance, and started work on his groundbreaking After Lorca the next year. Spicer often compared poets to radio receivers sensitive to messages from the spirit world and his view of poetry as being dictated from the beyond first took shape in this compilation of Lorca translations and poems dedicated to Lorca. Spicer’s uncompromising attitude towards the commercial side of publishing combined with many years of heavy alcohol abuse, led to an untimely death at the age of 40 in the poverty ward of San Francisco General Hospital in 1965.

Estimate:£1.67

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