for you i would build a whole new universe

Love Poems

1

Do the flowers change as I touch your skin?

They are merely buttercups. No sign of death in them. They die

and you know by their death that it is no longer summer.

Baseball season. 

Actually

I don't remember ever touching your back when there were

flowers (buttercups and dandelions there) waiting to die.

The end of summer

The baseball season finished. The

Bumble-bee there cruising over a few poor flowers.

They have cut the ground from under us. The touch Of

your hands on my back. The Giants

Winning 93 games

Is as impossible

In spirit

As the grass we might walk on.

jack spicer is my favorite poet. usually i can articulate why i like something, or why i don't, but with his works, which were out of print for for so long, talking about them is like trying to draw underwater. in an advanced poetry workshop for which i wasn't really qualified, the professor gave us the heads of the town up to the aether and selected works by robert creeley. it was probably the best reading opportunity that came my way at columbia college.

heads of the town doesn't include love poems, but spicer frequently returns to orpheus, eurydice, dada themes, and images from cocteau films. his images are often spare, and he pushes the reader to build long skinny bridges between disparate concepts. he's into mortality and pop culture, natural images and puns. he's referential and romantic. he was big into burning his transcripts, instead of publishing them.


i like how, in this poem (the first of nine poems in a series) he lets the reader walk on insubstantial air.

the only poet living today that i would consider comparing to him is d.a. powell, another experimental, grew-up-on-greek, creative genius homosexual teaching in san francisco.