Comments on: Taking Dictation from a Martian Muse

By: Steven Fama

Steven Fama — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:02:48 +0000

Hi Reginald,
I hope this finds you aggressively on the mend.
Your phrase, “the fetishization of personal creativity” suggests a too harsh approach to the wonder that is you, and me, and the collective dog named Boo.
Whether it be via Martians or other “outside” practice it all comes through somebody’s hands.

By: John Gallaher

John Gallaher — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:16:47 +0000

Jack Spicer’s Martians are Romantic, true, but they also landed in the culture long back and can be heard there from time to time. It’s difficult to decide who’s listening to whom, at times. The bounded and bonded get all severed and connected in Spicer, and that’s quite a good experience of analogy and the persistent IS of the thing being itself. I wish Spicer were talked about more. But then, of course, I wish a lot of things were talked about more. Or listened to more.
Hope you’re home by now?

By: john

john — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:04:20 +0000

Thanks Don — duh! — I overlooked the “Introduction” when I looked at the Table of Contents before commenting.
It makes sense that Spicer’s Goddess began as parody. I hear Eliot’s mermaids in the line too.
Thanks again.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:45:31 +0000

John, the introduction to the selection of Spicer's work in the magazine might be helpful to look at (along with the other poems, each linked separately, I'm afraid); click here. Naturally, the book itself provides more scholarly detail about the poems than would have made sense for us to run.

By: john

john — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:05:46 +0000

Thanks, Don, for the link to the poem. I’m eager to have a look at the new Collected. I’ve nothing against *Poetry* publishing Spicer now; dates and/or context would be nice, though, considering that in his latter career he argued against poetic “one night stands” and (as far as I know) did not seek to publish any and perhaps did not write any. A history of attempts at publication (if any) of the newly published poems would be nice too.

By: bill knott

bill knott — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:44:51 +0000

…. so is this where Craig Raine (and Christopher Reid et al)
took their “Martianism” from ?

By: Don Share

Don Share — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:24:16 +0000

Did you say goddess?? As Spicer sayeth, (click here for full poem) -
“Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one. “

By: john

john — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:48:46 +0000

Reginald,
Bravo to you for connecting the Martians to the Muse(s). Murat is correct that Spicer sought to disassociate the Martians from the Muse, and it is worth noting that, but in order to do so, I think you have to grant Spicer a tendentious claim as to what constitutes the Muse. My impression, from other contemporary polemics from some of Spicer’s contemporaries, was that New American poets were disassociating themselves from Robert Graves’s (fascinating) reduction of Muse to a goddess embodying herself in a literal woman of the poet’s acquaintance. If we take Muse to mean that, then no, the Martians aren’t the Muse(s).
Historically, however, the Muses functioned precisely as you describe, it seems to me from the poems I’ve read: as a way to ask for inspiration, and to mark the poet’s utterance as inspired and the poet himself or herself as special.
My take is that Spicer’s Martians are a tongue-in-cheek name for the unknowability and unpredictability of inspiration. As such, I share his (small “r”) romanticism.

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:44:06 +0000

Meant to provide the URL for Cipher Journal home page. The “Contents” link takes you to a list of all translations and essays there.
http://www.cipherjournal.com/html/home.html
Kent

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:55:45 +0000

It’s very much on the topic of Reginald’s good post (though I find his concluding comments a bit off), so I think it’s fine to mention this collaborative letter-essay I did with Mark DuCharme a couple years back: “Addressed to No One: Reading Jack Spicer’s After Lorca.”
http://www.cipherjournal.com/html/johnson_ducharme_i.html
I’d want to phrase some things differently now, myself, but since only a very few critical meditations on the book exist (quite amazing, given AL’s utterly groundbreaking nature and the fact it was published fifty years ago), maybe those interested in Lorca will find something of use in the exchange between Mark and me.
The piece appears in Lucas Klein’s Cipher Journal, which is devoted to issues of translation and cross-genre offshoots. Check out the wonderful table of contents Klein has been building over the years on the magazine’s home page.
Kent