a tribute with readings by
James Alexander, David Bromige, Wesley Day, Lew Ellingham, Gerald Fabian, Nemi Frost, Larry Kearney, Joanne Kyger, Alvin
William Moore, Mary Rice Moore, John Norton, Ariel Parkinson, James Schevill, Richard Tagett
November 6, 1998
Jack Spicer (1925-1965), one of the most important postmodern poets, was born in Los Angeles but worte most of his major work here in San Francisco, where he died at age 40. Spicer was the center of an active community of poets and visual artists who roved from North Beach to Aquatic Park, Polk Gulch to Candlestick Park. A passionate nevironmentalist and city theorist, Spicer wrote: "True conservation is the effort of the artist and the private man to keep things true ... Death is not final. Only parking lots."
Two new books explore Spicer's legacy: The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi, and a biography, Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance, by Lew Ellingham and Kevin Killian (both volumes from Wesleyan University Press/University Presses of New England). Tonight, Ellingham, Gizzi and Killian will appear and discuss their books, then turn over the floor to many of Jack Spicer's contemporaries -- artists, writers, thinkers -- who will each read from his work. "Our city shall stand as the lumber rots and Runcible mountain crumbles, and the ocean, eating all of islands, comes to meet us."
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