His wild poetics drawn on linguistics theory broke ground for a number of us. Quite simply, the narrative within a poem – or a series, as Spicer soon turned away from the single-page model – no longer had to conform with factual reality. I can only imagine what he would have done with Donald Trump as a figure. An image, however, took on a life of its own.
I didn’t realize how central the Los Angeles born character was to the West Coast poetry world. He was co-founder of the Six Gallery in San Francisco, where the Beat movement burst forth, and later in the Berkeley side of the Bay Area literary scene.
His collected poems, published posthumously by Black Sparrow and Grey Fox presses, remain core works on my bookshelf.
I also loved the way Ed Dorn picked up and continued Spicer’s stream.
Jnana's Red Barn 