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by: Jack. Spicer
List Price: $24.95Amazon.com's Price: $22.45 You Save: $2.50 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780819563408
ISBN: 0819563404
Label: Wesleyan
Manufacturer: Wesleyan
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 290
Publication Date: June 15, 1998
Publisher: Wesleyan
Sales Rank: 111021
Studio: Wesleyan
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The House That Jack Built collects for the first time the four historic talks given by controversial poet Jack Spicer just before his early death in 1965. These lively and provocative lectures function as a gloss to Spicer's own poetry, a general discourse on poetics, and a cautionary handbook for young poets. This long-awaited document of Spicer's unorthodox poetic vision, what Robin Blaser has called 'the practice of outside,' is an authoritative edition of an underground classic.
Peter Gizzi's afterword elucidates some of the fundamental issues of Spicer's poetry and lectures, including the concept of poetic dictation, which Spicer renovates with vocabularies of popular culture: radio, Martians, and baseball; his use of the California landscape as a backdrop for his poems; and his visual imagination in relation to the aesthetics of west-coast funk assemblage. This book delivers a firsthand account of the contrary and turbulent poetics that define Spicer's ongoing contribution to an international avant-garde.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - the house that jack built
A must for anyone interested in 1 of the 3 greatest poets [writing in english] circa 1950 to present. Gizzi's essay is illuminating and steers clear of obfuscating what Spicer meant by "dictation" and the "outside".
Rating: - Dynamics of Dictation and The Love of the Game
The House That Jack Built is a must have for any serious poet or reader of poetry and poetics. Spicer's lectures on dictation, the serial poem, and the practice of reading lay a foundation for the art of writing poetry that is without default. His ideas are instrumental in poetry's process. Peter Gizzi's afterword enlivens the spirit of Spicer's practice and makes it available to the reader. Exhibiting a close relationship with Spicer's work and method, Gizzi both completes and opens the material ... Read More
Rating:  - A wonderful book until Gizzi starts writing
This book is simply amazing as Jack Spicer had amazing martian forces driving him. The lectures are excellently transcribed and annotated. This part of the book holds amazing inspiration. Where the book fails is that Gizzi decided to start writing about Jack. I could hardly begin to read his tacked on essay before putting the book down in disgust. Jack spoke for himself just fine. The essay belongs somewhere else.
Rating: - Hey, Jack Spicer is still the hidden force of US poetics!
Hey, Jack Spicer is still the hidden force and westcoast "genisu loci" of US poetics, and Peter Gizzi has done a yeoman's job of putting these probing and lost lectures together to do new work. The poesy game will not be disturbed however, and putting J Spicer on cover of American Poetry Review will not alter the pastoral fact and fate of downfall and lost aura. Still, this is must reading.
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