[{"id":"5376","cataloger_name":["Mozhgan,Nourafkan"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Lecture #3: Jack Spicer at Tallman’s house in Vancouver on June 17, 1965 part 1 of 2 #753"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Home recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Spicer, Jack"],"creator_names_search":["Spicer, Jack"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/46807530\",\"name\":\"Spicer, Jack \",\"dates\":\"1925-1965\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\",\"Reader\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1965],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/1251/Reading in BC_MsC199_753.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Excellent\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"T02:10:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"753-side-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:46:51\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"58.1 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"753-side-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:46:51\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"60.8 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1965-06-17\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/487641396\",\"venue\":\"Warren Tallman’s House\",\"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.\",\"address\":\"2527 West 37th Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"49.23722\",\"longitude\":\"-123.11556\"}]"],"Address":["2527 West 37th Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada"],"Venue":["Warren Tallman’s House"],"City":["Vancouver, British Columbia"],"content_notes":["SFU BC Readings formatting"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Jack Spicer: Lecture #3, \\nJune 17, 1965\\nRecorded at Tallman's\\npart I\\nside 1: 45:30\\nside 2: 45:10\\nMASTER\\nDOLBY B\\n #753 \",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553066405892,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:57.525Z","contents":["Side\tTrack\tNo.\tComments\nOne\t\t008\tSide one begins with introduction by Spicer on talking about and reading a poem in process, with the possibility this could ruin the poem\n\t\t032\tHe will give some background to the process of his poem.  He asks the audience to imagine that he has started to write a poem that he is one quarter to halfway through and invites questions on the process of this poem and how he would treat a poem he was starting now\n\t\t093\tSomeone asks what Spicer is worried about\n\t\t094\tQuestions begin before the reading of the poem-in-process beginning with someone asking if he wants the audience to write his poem.  Spicer responds, no, but that it is a possible problem when reading an unfinished work\n\t\t095\tSpicer responds with a discussion of the previous Vancouver poems he wrote, one of which was a section of a long poem called The Book of Magazine Verse\n\t\t122\tSpicer describes his numbering and sectioning process\n\t\t145\tSpicer thought of writing poems for magazines that wouldn’t print them.  General laughter\n\t\t139\tQuestioner asks if at this point he sees several directions at once\n\t\t160\tSpicer says he tries many directions and that this book, although good, is not that good… it may go down the drain\n\t\t173\tThe first of many questions about the mind being an empty vessel\n\t\t188\tSpicer considers the necessity of the element of chance in a poet’s work\n\t\t189\tQ; Is it possible that the voice could tell you the third part first?\n\t\t212\tSpicer says he’s never changed chronological order, but it is possible and he would like to.  But then whatever you’d like to do, is a very bad idea in a poem\n\t\t220\tSpicer on the poet’s own rules.  Rules can be arbitrary you can have rules that you cheat from, you can change the rules\n\t\t238\tAre you cheating at this game if you use the dream?\n\t\t241\tSpicer explains this question is in reference to Vancouver poems that were almost edited directly from drams he had in Vancouver in May, 1965\n\t\t249\tSpicer thinks a dream is the same as any other piece of furniture in the room.  But he doesn’t see the dream as being a meditation thing\n\t\t285\tQuestions about dictated thoughts – where, when, how they came to Spicer\n\t\t347\tQ: Is dictation usually in words or images or combinations of these?\n\t\t348\tSpicer says it comes never in images, sometimes in rhythms\n\t\t350\tDorothy Livesay interjects that Hopkins heard the music and the rhythm and finally had to write The Wreck of the Deutschland\n\t\t354\tSpicer says his Arthur poem mentions the noise in the head of the poem which dictates itself in rhythm, which always is in rhythm you don’t want\n\t\t363\tSpicer says you can always get poems if you know how to empty yourself\n\t\t377\tQ: Where does the craft and the intelligence of the poet enter into the poem?\n\t\t380\tSpicer says intelligence is part of the furniture and craft is something you want to get out of the house so enough ghosts can get into the house.  You have to learn to take out the majority of your craft\n\t\t396\tSpicer turns to the poems (from Book of Magazine Verse) “Two Poems for The Nation”\n\t\t416\tEnds\n\t\t417\t“Six Poems for Poetry Chicago”\n\t\t425\tTwo\n\t\t437\tThree\n\t\t439\tTape fades out and seems to begin again at 425 (above)\n\t\t449\tFour\n\t\t457\tFive\n\t\t472\tEnd\n\t\t473\tTISH Poems 1\n\t\t482\tTwo\n\t\t489\tThree\n\t\t498\tEnd\n\t\t499\t“Four Poems for Ramparts”\n\t\t521\tThree\n\t\t529\tFour\n\t\t540\tEnds\n\t\t541\tFour Poems for The St. Louis Sporting News\n\t\t551\tTwo\n\t\t560\tThree\n\t\t569\tFour\n\t\t578\tEnds\n\t\t579\t“Poems for the Vancouver Festival”\n\t\t604\tTape ends in the middle of #3\n\t\t\tContinued on Side Two\nTwo\t\t005\tSide two begins mid-reading by Spicer\n\t\t013\tQuestions begin with wanting to know how long Spicer had been working on this poem\n\t\t018\tSpicer discusses writing The Vancouver poems in Vancouver.  Spicer says the current poems are in a mess, not knowing what they want to be\n\t\t056\tSpicer asks what is the audience’s reaction to the poems just read (presumably the Vancouver poems) – do the voices come through?\n\t\t058\tVarious subjective comments from audience\n\t\t113\tSpicer feels the poem will move closer toward building the city instead of the celebration of the city as the Textbook of Poetry did\n\t\t149\tJamie sees the Vancouver Poems as being intimately connected wi5th the baseball image of the city – the diamond image connected with the city’s pearl in the sea image\n\t\t175\tSpicer says he wrote the poem after going to “that awful place where the ferry boats are” – (Horseshoe Bay)\n\t\t188\tSpicer explains his use of the term ‘measure’ as it relates to the city and walking through it\n\t\t253\tQuestioner argues that there must be a voice which is inherently that of the poet and not the furniture cluttering the mind\n\t\t255\tSpicer disagrees\n\t\t276\tSpicer goes into music and Stravinsky to elaborate his point\n\t\t302\tQuestioner asks if not all of the questions directed at Spicer contain a doubt that Spicer’s skills, personality, accomplishment with language are ruled out when the upside is dictating the poem.  If people are not wondering if you’re there, Jack Spicer?\n\t\t313\tSpicer agrees that people don’t believe him, but that they may believe him if there were to try it\n\t\t329\tSpicer is asked – again – if he sees the dictation of the poem as a meditative process instead of some technique of poetry\n\t\t330\tSpicer says Cezanne (his favourite painter) likely never meditated a day in his life, but he managed to have his last 10 years of painting pure of anything which he intended which is something that Kandinsky (nice painter) never did\n\t\t339\tSpicer points out that he doesn’t expect anyone to take his word on it, but he would like to see people experiment with it\n\t\t347\tSpicer goes back to the discussion of his mind being a blank as he works.  It is an impossible process to make your mind a blank – He points to the process of playing an instrument as an example\n\t\t363\tInterjection from listener claiming Spicer to have given the best and most accurate description of the production of art he has ever heard\n\t\t376\tSame speaker says Copland once remarked that the best performances always are those just this side of disaster.  He says this is so much like Spicer’s idea of taking a change and risking it\n\t\t386\tSpicer says Ernst Block came to CAL and was pleased by the fact that Toscanini said he wouldn’t play anything by Block because it was too bloody.  Bloch realized he had to play the dance between the tensions of bloody and too bloody\n\t\t403\tQ: How do you judge what comes through to be a true message, what do you want to say?\n\t\t407\tSpicer uses the analogy of baseball again calling the poet a catcher who likes to think of himself as a pitcher.  Diverges into a baseball pitching anecdote denoting how a pitcher gets pleased with something he’s done\n\t\t457\tQ: about the magazine verse poem and Spicer’s comment about being becalmed or not becalmed\n\t\t474\tSpicer asks what people thought about the lemon.  Discussion ensues about oranges and lemons and oval as the wrong description of a lemon\n\t\t515\tStudent remarks that it seemed like a Romantic poem compared to the Heads of the Town Up to the Aether which gave Spicer’s bitterness\n\t\t526\tSpicer asks if anyone saw the connection with the oranges and the last baseball poem\n\t\t531\tSpicer says Abner Doubleday was one of the first inventors of baseball and the first president of the American Theosophical Society.  Debate continues as to whether baseball belongs to Vancouver, or to Canada, or not.  Discussion dissolves into laughter and general chaos.\n\t\t537\tDorothy Livesay suggests the poem is about Spicer, about the States, it’s not Canadian.  She says baseball is an American game; here they play soccer and cricket.  She is generally laughed and booed down"],"score":1.9320511},{"id":"5377","cataloger_name":["Mozhgan,Nourafkan"],"partnerInstitution":["Simon Fraser University"],"collection_source_collection":["Reading in BC Collection"],"source_collection_label":["Reading in BC Collection"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SFU Library"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":[""],"collection_source_collection_description":["Reading in BC collection was assembled during the late 1970s and ‘80s. There are approximately 1000 tapes in this collection. It consists of the recordings of Canadian and American writers, mostly poets, reading poems, talking, being interviewed, participating in panel discussions, and so on. Most of the recordings were made in BC, but there are some made elsewhere in Canada or the USA. Quite a few of these recordings are unique copies, not to be found elsewhere."],"collection_source_collection_id":["MsC 199"],"persistent_url":[""],"item_title":["Lecture #3, Jack Spicer at Tallman’s house in Vancouver on June 17, 1965 part 2 of 2 #754"],"item_title_source":["cassette and j-card"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Home recording"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)"],"creator_names":["Spicer, Jack"],"creator_names_search":["Spicer, Jack"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/46807530\",\"name\":\"Spicer, Jack \",\"dates\":\"1925-1965\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Speaker\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Performance_Date":[1965],"material_description":["[{\"side\":\"\",\"image\":\"../Uploads/1252/Reading in BC_MsC199_754.jpg\",\"other\":\"\",\"extent\":\"1/8 inch\",\"AV_types\":\"Audio\",\"tape_brand\":\"\",\"generations\":\"\",\"Conservation\":\"\",\"equalization\":\"\",\"playback_mode\":\"Stereo\",\"playing_speed\":\"\",\"sound_quality\":\"Good\",\"recording_type\":\"Analogue\",\"storage_capacity\":\"T01:52:00\",\"physical_condition\":\"Good\",\"track_configuration\":\"2 track\",\"material_designation\":\"Cassette\",\"physical_composition\":\"Magnetic Tape\",\"accompanying_material\":\"J-card\",\"other_physical_description\":\"Black and white clear jewel case with J-card\"}]"],"material_designations":["Cassette"],"physical_compositions":["Magnetic Tape"],"recording_type":["Analogue"],"AV_type":["Audio"],"playback_mode":["Stereo"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"754-side-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:30:10\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"29.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"},{\"file_url\":\"\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"754-side-2.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"Stereo\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"T00:29:07\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"28.2 MB\",\"bitrate\":\"32 bit\",\"encoding\":\"WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"1965-06-17\",\"type\":\"Performance Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"J-card\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/487641396\",\"venue\":\"Warren Tallman’s house\",\"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.\",\"address\":\"2527 West 37th Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada\",\"latitude\":\"49.23722\",\"longitude\":\"-123.11556\"}]"],"Address":["2527 West 37th Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada"],"Venue":["Warren Tallman’s house"],"City":["Vancouver, British Columbia"],"content_notes":["SFU BC Readings formatting"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Jack Spicer: Lecture #3, \\nJune 17, 1965\\nRecorded at Tallman's\\npart II\\nside 1: 29:25\\nside 2: 28:30\\nMASTER\\nDOLBY B\\n #754 \",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670553067454464,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:57.525Z","contents":["Side\tTrack\tNo.\tComments\nOne\t\t009\tQ: If you pitched an orange to your own catcher, you yourself writing, would you catch it?\n\t\t019\tSpicer: Is there a batter between the pitcher and the catcher?\n\t\t028\tSpicer goes into baseball metaphor to contend with this question\n\t\t047\tStudents ask about a play on the words lemon and pitcher, and various other word usages, ie. Oranges and lemons\n\t\t085\tQuestion 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?\n\t\t109\tA 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\n\t\t202\tA 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\n\t\t217\tResponding 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\n\t\t226\tA 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\n\t\t242\tA question on Spicer’s change of writing as it is affected by change in lifestyle\n\t\t245\tSpicer explains\n\t\t286\tEllen 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\n\t\t292\tSpicer agrees that it scares him too\n\t\t294\tAn outburst of discussion on this point\n\t\t309\tQ: This change of geography – is it important to most poets and to yourself?\n\t\t317\tSpicer responds that gait is more important than measure to changes in geography\n\t\t333\tAnecdote about Valery going to a lecture about his own poems.  “I felt as though they were talking about a ghost of myself”\n\t\t345\tQuestioner 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\n\t\t348\tSpicer quotes Ogden Nash in response\n\t\t372\tA question about the lines of distinction between Spicer and the ghosts\n\t\t380\tSpicer complains that no one believes his belief in the ghost, that what he writes is outside of, rather than in his head\n\t\t383\tSomeone 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\nSide\tTrack\tNo.\tComments\nOne\t\t397\tSide One ends in the middle of this discussion\nTwo\t\t006\tSide Two begins in the middle of a discussion about Spicer’s messages in his work\n\t\t050\tQ: At what point did Spicer begin to receive these messages\n\t\t056\tSpicer said they began halfway through the Lorca poems; before that he just wrote poems\n\t\t078\tLivesay questions Spicer about the importance of these messages to either Spicer or his readers wince Spicer says the messages are not important\n\t\t084\tSpicer qualifies his use of the term unimportant.  They are important to your life since you live it as something more than a human being\n\t\t107\tSpicer is asked if he is writing with any special purposes.  A debate ensues over Yeats\n\t\t156\tWarren Tallman asks if former poets can be part of the outside\n\t\t163\tSpicer 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\n\t\t194\tSpicer describes Blaser’s ghosts and is less sure about Duncan’s ghosts\n\t\t213\tQuestion asked if the ghosts must be from or in the locale in which the writer works\n\t\t214\tSpicer says this makes sense.  A discussion of Lorca and Duende begins moving into a story about Billie Holiday\n\t\t311\tSpicer talks about TISH\n\t\t338\tTallman says that also in the summer of ’63 Olson had a visit from his angel – Did this make sense to Spicer?\n\t\t341\tSpicer says angel means messenger in Hebrew\n\t\t350\tLivesay asks if this is the same for Rilke’s angels\n\t\t351\tSpicer says Rilke’s angels come from things rather than the opposite way of Jacob’s wrestlers\n\t\t409\tSpicer invites one last question and is asked who he thinks will win the pennant.  His bet is Milwaukee\n\t\t427\tDiscussion dissolves"],"score":1.9320511}]