Even Strange Ghosts Can Be Shared: The Collected Letters of Jack Spicer

＂Poet Jack Spicer’s collected correspondence showcases the dazzling intelligence of an iconic American writer; these 300 letters are a crucial component of Spicer’s unique oeuvre, and they radiate with the brilliance, ferocity, and vulnerability that characterize his poetry＂-- Provided by publisher.

JACK SPICER (1925-1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. During his short but prolific life, he published numerous books with small presses, including Billy the Kid (1959), The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether (1962), and Language (1965). Spicer’s first book, After Lorca (1957), was recently reprinted by NYRB Poets with an introduction by Peter Gizzi (2021).Wesleyan University Press has published The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi (1998), My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian (2008), and Be Brave to Things: The Uncollected Poetry and Plays of Jack Spicer, edited by Daniel Katz (2021). DANIEL BENJAMIN received his PhD in English and Critical Theory from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of an afterword to Jack Spicer’s The Wasps (speCt! Books, 2016). With Eric Sneathen, he co-edited The Bigness of Things: New Narrative and Visual Culture (Wolfman Books, 2017), and with Claire Marie Stancek, he co-edited Active Aesthetics: Contemporary Australian Poetry (Tuumba Press/Giramondo, 2016). His academic articles have appeared in small axe, Contemporary Literature, and European Romantic Review. He teaches English at Abington Friends School in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. KELLY HOLT is a writer and teacher living in San Francisco. Her poems and essays have appeared in After Spicer: Critical Essays, edited by John Emil Vincent (Wesleyan University Press, 2011), Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006), and journals including Fulcrum, New American Writing, Jacket, and Mirage 4/Period(ical). KEVIN KILLIAN (1952-2019) was a San Francisco-based poet, novelist, playwright, and art writer. He won the American Book Award for poetry in 2009 for My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press, 2009), which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi.