CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
5377
Partner Institution:
Simon Fraser University
Source Collection Label:
Reading in BC Collection
Sub Series:
Reading in BC Collection
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
Lecture #3, Jack Spicer at Tallman’s house in Vancouver on June 17, 1965 part 2 of 2 #754
Title Source:
cassette and j-card
Language:
English
Production Context:
Home recording
Genre:
Conversation
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
Rights:
Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)
CREATORS
Name:
Spicer, Jack
Dates:
1925-1965
Role:
"Speaker"
CONTRIBUTORS
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Image:
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Cassette
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Storage Capacity:
T01:52:00
Extent:
1/8 inch
Track Configuration:
2 track
Playback Mode:
Stereo
Sound Quality:
Good
Physical Condition:
Good
Other Physical Description:
Black and white clear jewel case with J-card
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
Channel Field:
Stereo
Sample Rate:
44.1 kHz
Duration:
T00:30:10
Size:
29.2 MB
Bitrate:
32 bit
Encoding:
WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files
Channel Field:
Stereo
Sample Rate:
44.1 kHz
Duration:
T00:29:07
Size:
28.2 MB
Bitrate:
32 bit
Encoding:
WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files
Dates
Date:
1965-06-17
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
J-card
LOCATION
Address:
2527 West 37th Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Venue:
Warren Tallman’s house
Latitude:
49.23722
Longitude:
-123.11556
Notes:
Tallman and family lived in the '50s & '60s at 2527 West 37th Ave in Kerrisdale and this was where quite a few talks and reading were held and recorded.
CONTENT
Contents:
Side Track No. Comments
One 009 Q: If you pitched an orange to your own catcher, you yourself writing, would you catch it?
019 Spicer: Is there a batter between the pitcher and the catcher?
028 Spicer goes into baseball metaphor to contend with this question
047 Students ask about a play on the words lemon and pitcher, and various other word usages, ie. Oranges and lemons
085 Question regarding Yeats’s message of a non-tragic universe. Does Spicer sense that the news coming to him is of a tragic or non-tragic nature?
109 A question about the fool to which Spicer responds on the catcher as the fool. A long discussion baseball metaphors follows, which ends at 196 with Spicer saying he thinks the baseball metaphor has gotten them all confused
202 A return to the discussion with a question about how long it will take Spicer to finish the poem. Spicer to finish the poem. Spicer reflects on not wanting to leave Vancouver, not having a job, his reluctance to return to Berkeley
217 Responding to a question about a transition he is undergoing in his writing, Spicer uses radio metaphor to explain that one cannot separate writing from living
226 A question asking when Heads of the Town was written and several comments follow, including one by Dorothy Livesay, which agree that it seemed a different poem from others
242 A question on Spicer’s change of writing as it is affected by change in lifestyle
245 Spicer explains
286 Ellen Tallman says the last part of the Vancouver festival poetry makes her feel that the questions and warnings that exist in Spicer’s other poems aren’t there in the last three poems
292 Spicer agrees that it scares him too
294 An outburst of discussion on this point
309 Q: This change of geography – is it important to most poets and to yourself?
317 Spicer responds that gait is more important than measure to changes in geography
333 Anecdote about Valery going to a lecture about his own poems. “I felt as though they were talking about a ghost of myself”
345 Questioner returns to his inquiry into the tragic dimension of poetry and wants to pursue the discussion into what he sees as the comic dimension of Spicer’s poems
348 Spicer quotes Ogden Nash in response
372 A question about the lines of distinction between Spicer and the ghosts
380 Spicer complains that no one believes his belief in the ghost, that what he writes is outside of, rather than in his head
383 Someone responds that it is not so much disbelief as the Vancouver writing community’s preoccupation with the handling of the language as prior, whereas Spicer’s method seems to reverse that
Side Track No. Comments
One 397 Side One ends in the middle of this discussion
Two 006 Side Two begins in the middle of a discussion about Spicer’s messages in his work
050 Q: At what point did Spicer begin to receive these messages
056 Spicer said they began halfway through the Lorca poems; before that he just wrote poems
078 Livesay questions Spicer about the importance of these messages to either Spicer or his readers wince Spicer says the messages are not important
084 Spicer qualifies his use of the term unimportant. They are important to your life since you live it as something more than a human being
107 Spicer is asked if he is writing with any special purposes. A debate ensues over Yeats
156 Warren Tallman asks if former poets can be part of the outside
163 Spicer discusses Dunbar’s Lament fort the Makers. Says he got Lorca directly on the phone from the past. But it’s difficult to know what is your reading of English literature and what is ghosts
194 Spicer describes Blaser’s ghosts and is less sure about Duncan’s ghosts
213 Question asked if the ghosts must be from or in the locale in which the writer works
214 Spicer says this makes sense. A discussion of Lorca and Duende begins moving into a story about Billie Holiday
311 Spicer talks about TISH
338 Tallman says that also in the summer of ’63 Olson had a visit from his angel – Did this make sense to Spicer?
341 Spicer says angel means messenger in Hebrew
350 Livesay asks if this is the same for Rilke’s angels
351 Spicer says Rilke’s angels come from things rather than the opposite way of Jacob’s wrestlers
409 Spicer invites one last question and is asked who he thinks will win the pennant. His bet is Milwaukee
427 Discussion dissolves
Notes:
SFU BC Readings formatting
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
Jack Spicer: Lecture #3,
June 17, 1965
Recorded at Tallman's
part II
side 1: 29:25
side 2: 28:30
MASTER
DOLBY B
#754
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