Hooray! A New Book of Critical Essays on Jack Spicer

Thankfully, during a time when poetry series and poetry societies are both being de-funded, we are able to find others in a better boat. Wesleyan University Press is one of them. As we noted recently, it will be publishing Joseph Ceravolo's collected poems, Mad Angels—a highly anticipated event, to be sure. More good news on the horizon comes in the form of After Spicer: Critical Essays, edited by John Emil Vincent, which is just out and includes essays exploring Spicer's legacy by Maria Damon, Norman Finkelstein, Kelly Holt, Catherine Imbriglio, Kevin Killian, Michael Snediker, Anita Sokolsky, and Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop. You can find the full table of contents here.

Helpful reading: Jacket #7 has a Spicer chronology, which features contextualizing events (Cuban Missile Crisis, Watergate, the publication of Olson's "Projective Verse") as well as a timeline of Spicer's own publications. Also in related news might be the George Stanley issue of the Capilano Review (we wrote about it here); much of the content touches on Spicer's influence. Rob McClennan wrote about the importance of the issue ("Even if you haven't read a single word by Vancouver poet George Stanley, this issue provides an opportunity for an entry point to his writing, an important connection between the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s to current and recent decades of Canadian writing in Prince George and Vancouver...") on his blog.