The Collected Books of Jack Spicer
book by Jack Spicer
The Collected Books of Jack Spicer first appeared in 1975, ten years after the death of Jack Spicer. It was "edited & with a commentary by Robin Blaser" and published in Santa Rosa, California by Black Sparrow Press. A primary document of the San Francisco Renaissance, The Collected Books of Jack Spicer has arguably reached the status of a twentieth century "classic" and helped to define an emerging countertradition to the prevailing literary establishment. Since this edition has gone out of print, it has been updated, revised and republished as My Vocabulary Did This To Me. The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian (Wesleyan University Press, 2008).
Contents of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer
The contents page of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Fifth Printing, 1996) is divided into four sections:
First (1) section
Reprints twelve books of poetry composed between 1957-1965 and in (for the most part) chronological order.
(Only the title is listed on the contents page. However, each title page itself lists a date and, in some cases, a subtitle. These are shown below)
After Lorca, With an Introduction by Federico García Lorca, 1957
Admonitions, 1958
A Book of Music, with words by Jack Spicer, 1958
Billy the Kid, 1958
Fifteen False Propositions Against God, 1958
A Red Wheelbarrow, [1968]
Apollo Sends Seven Nursery Rhymes to James Alexander,
Lament for The Makers, 1961
Heads of the Town up to the Aether, ("Homage to Creeley"; "A Fake Novel About The
Life of Arthur Rimbaud"; "A Textbook of Poetry"), 1960–61
The Holy Grail, ("The Book of Gawain", "The Book of Percival", "The Book of
Lancelot", "The Book of Gwenivere", "The Book of Merlin", "The Book of Galahad",
"The Book of the Death of Arthur"), 1962
Language, ("Thing Language", "Love Poems", "Intermissions", "Transformations",
"Morphemics", "Phonemics", "Graphemics"), 1964
Book of Magazine Verse, (Poems: "for The Nation", "for Poetry Chicago",
"for Tish", "for Ramparts", "for The St. Louis Sporting News",
"for the Vancouver Festival", "for Downbeat"), (no date follows)
Second (2) section
"The Practice of Outside", an essay by Robin Blaser.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as book by Jack Spicer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7726656. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 2008, 1996 and 1957.
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