like a bird, with his prick pierced through by a
needle". Spicer's quest is self-immolating and
almost futile, as Garcia Lorca says in the preface
to "After Lorca" The dead are notoriously hard to
satisfy". In "Juan Ramon Jimenez" he sums up
his own state "He suffers dream not moving, but
the bones quiver". Spicer suffers a Sisyphean
struggle against the shamanic spirits which attest
his living form. In "suicide" he tells us "his heart
was stuffed with dead wings and linen flowers”.
This no doubt incurs his own disembodied state as
he himself was to die by such means. Spicer is
conscious of his awakened sense and its relation to
others. In the poem “Ferlinghetti” he chimes, in
typical ironic tone, “beep bop-de-beep they are all
asleep, they’re all asleep”. Here he is parodying
Ferlinghetti’s lacklustre poetic prose. He does the
same to imagist Wallace Stevens in “A red
wheelbarrow”, referencing WS’s poem of the same
name. Spicer is the suffering poet-shaman, he was
a homosexual who died by suicide. He suffered
from unrequited love and this is a theme of many
of his poems. He was bestowed with a great gift
and was a great influencer of the beat generation.
However, Spicer even sometimes questions his
own ulterior sense and gift in “Magic” by saying
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