Jack Spicer's "Poetry as Magic" Questionnaire

I. Politics

1. What is your favorite political song?

2. If you had a chance to eliminate three political figures in the world, which would you choose?

3. What political group, slogan, or idea in the world today has the most to do with Magic? With Poetry?

4. Who were the Lovestoneites?

II. Religion

1. Which one of these figures had or represented religious views nearest to your own religious views? Which furthest? Jesus, Emperor Julian, Diogenes, Budha, Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, Lao Tse, Socrates, Dionysus, Apollo, Hermes Trimegistus, Li Po, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Apollonius of Tyana, Simon Magus, Zoroaster, Mohammed, the White Goddess, Cicero.

2. Classify this set of figures in the same way. Calvin, Kierkegaard, Suzuki, Schweiter, Marx, Russell, St. Thomas Aquinas, Luther, St. Augustine, Santayana, the Mad Bomber, Marquis de Sade, Yeats, Gandhi, William James, Hitler, C.S. Lewis, Proust.

3. What is your favorite book of the Bible?

III. History

1. Give the approximate date of the following people of events:

Plato____Buddha____The Battle of Waterloo____Dante____The invention of printing____Nero____Chaucer____The unification of Italy____Joan of Arc____

2. Write a paragraph about how the fall of Rome affected modern poetry.

IV. Poetry

1. If you were editing a magazine and had an unlimited budget, which poets would you first ask for contributions?

V. Personal

1. Name: Address: Age: Sex: City: Phone: Height: Weight: Married or unmarried:

2. What animal do you most resemble?

3. What insect do you most resemble?

4. What star do you most resemble?

5. What card of the ordinary playing-card deck (or Tarot deck) represents the absolute of your desires? The absolute of your fears?

6. Write the funniest joke that you know.

VI. Practice

Answer either or both question 1 and 2

1. In any of the three following poems fill in each of the blanks with any number of words you wish (including none) attempting to make a complete and satisfactory poem. Do not alter any of the existing words or punctuation or increase the number of lines.

2. Invent a dream in which you appear as a poet.

I

With the gums gone ____
are ____. And though the nose is ____ nothing,
the eye ____.

And now the ____
Of the radiator ____ floor
is ____, the even row of it
fit to raise
____ children.

You will count ____
You will stay in the midst of them,
You will know ____, you will hear them
in the narrow ____.

II

In ____ endlessness
Snow, ____ salt
He lost his ____.

The color white. He walks
Over a ____ carpet made
_____.

Without eyes or thumbs
He suffers _____
But the ____ quiver

In the ____ endlessness
How ____ a wound
His ____ left.

Snow, ____ salt ____
In the ____ endlessness.

III

Blue-rooted heron, ____ lake
____ song, like me no traveler
Taking ____ rest, loose-winged water-bird
And dumb with music ____.

I stand upon the waterfront, like him no traveller
____, dangling of ____ wings.
Aching for flight, for ____
I ____ and take my rest.

They will not hunt us ____
The flesh of the ____ is ____ and is dumb.
The sound of an arrow, the sight of a hunter
____ life without wings.

So let us die for death alone is motion
And death alone will make these herons fly.
____ wingless ____ ocean
____ die.


Now that I have done you the favor of typing this all out (full of original and new typos), do me the favor of filling it out and sending it back to me. I will post all completed questionnaires as I get them, and if I get enough, perhaps I can even put together a new site featuring nothing but.
My email is linked to this page, and it should be easy enough to copy and paste this into a message and shoot it off to me.

Heck, I'll even do one too...