An Interview with Spencer Reece
The journey of self-discovery is one of both hardship and triumph. In an era that kept a hard grip on prejudice, Spencer Reece remained vigilant in his quest for self-love and truth. The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Poet’s Memoir (Seven Stories Press 2021), is a tale of who Reece is, who he was, and how poetry created a sort of butterfly metamorphosis in him, out of which a life even more beautiful was born.
Spencer Reece's first published book of poetry, The Clerk's Tale (Houghton Mifflin 2004), was selected by Louise Glück as the winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize. The titular poem was adapted into a short film by James Franco in 2010. Reece is also the author of the poetry collection The Road to Emmaus (FSG 2014), a finalist for the Griffin Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. For several years he lived in Madrid, where he was the national secretary to the Episcopal bishop of Spain. He currently lives in New York.
Recently, I had the privilege of speaking with Spencer Reece about how his life, his work and this book evolved.
Carrie Teresa Sage: This memoir embodies the spirit, life and influence of Sylvia Plath (among many other poets) on your own life and your work. Throughout your entries, we see that many experiences and people have shaped you - how did you decide on Plath as a recurring figure in this book?
SR: Frankly, I wasn’t sure at first whether I was going to include Sylvia Plath. She was an early influence and yes has stayed with me. Yet she came early when I was young and in some ways, I’ve felt like she’s less of a touchstone for me as a mature adult. However, she spoke to me, as I believe she speaks to so many, especially people who are in some way emotionally desperate. Elizabeth Bishop is some ways I perhaps more closely resemble in temperament and gesture. But Plath came first and her desperation matched my teen years and early twenties. It’s a miracle any of us survive those years! I decided on her biography and poems to be woven into the opening chapter because I read her mostly in those young years and the book works contrapuntally so that the poet corresponds to a narrative arc --- Plath teen years and early twenties, Bishop college years, George Herbert graduate school, James Merrill upon leaving school and being in the “real world,” Emily Dickinson my long years of isolation and family estrangement then reconciliation, Gerard Manley Hopkins returning to seminary, and then the last chapter a conglomeration of living poets Greg Pardlo, Richard Blanco, Luis Munoz, a visit with Mary Jo Salter, Mark Strand, making a film and teaching poetry to abandoned and abused girls in Honduras, making a literary festival in Madrid, and all under the umbrella of some sayings by Jesus as the chapter encapsulates ten years of my recent life as an ordained person. I do have some references of Plath throughout the book: as the book deepens and time passes, I think I begin to see her differently. Her children interested me too, what happened to them, how her suicide affected them. It’s such a desperate act. Now I think I can’t imagine contemplating it, not only is there much to live for but I can see how a suicide, as Arthur Miller wrote “kills two people, that’s what it’s for.” There’s so much anger behind it. Plath’s suicide destroyed Ted Hughes. It’s awful. I wouldn’t want to leave that legacy to others no matter how angry or sad I became. But I’ve learned now ways to handle the more volatile emotions, when young I didn’t know how. So her poetry sung to me.
CTS: The subtitle is A Poet’s Memoir. Throughout the book you bring to life the poets who have gone before you, intertwining them within your own journey. How did you arrive at this idea? What prompted you to thread their story within yours?
SR: I wasn’t interested in a “straight narrative memoir.” I needed to push myself. I wanted a challenge. I wanted to make a different tune. I wanted to invent something I hadn’t seen. A poetry breviary! A poetry devotional! I loved thinking about the old word ‘devotional” which we don’t use much now or if we do, we associate it with Christian tchotchkes. I liked the idea of pondering something different. Within the memoir genre. Poets saved me. I set out with that idea. I found the best way to show that rather than tell it was to have the poets appear organically through the narrative. It was complex and required charts! It was like writing a piece of music. The result I hope is fluid and natural and doesn’t read as “complex.” All the scaffolding I put up is now gone and put away. There shouldn’t be a hint of any of the scaffolding as you look at it now. Just the wall mural.
CTS: Thinking about transformation and the yearning to “erase” throughout the book, how has the speaker evolved by the end?
SR: The speaker is more comfortable with the self he has invented to be in the world. He has found a way to be. Poetry made that possible.
CTS: The symbolism throughout the book is both traumatic and comforting; discreet acts in the graveyard, suicide, your brother’s scar, references to religion, your parents, etc. If you had to choose one to represent your personal transformation, what would it be and why?
SR: One of the central images is the murder of my cousin, which is a sort of Christ-like murder: he died so I could live. He died at 23 and the murder was grotesque beyond imagining. It went unsolved. It wasn’t until I was in Europe and in my late fifties that I felt I could unleash that image and embody it fully and write about its effect on the whole. His death is central to the book. I think now if John hadn’t died I might not have lived, for his death brought me into AA. Under the lash of alcoholism, I ran to the meetings, scared and disoriented by his death. I’d say that now. I hope I am not getting carried away with drama when I say it. There is perhaps also some survivor’s guilt attached to the death of John. Why him? Why not me? I don’t know. I’ll never know.
CTS: What role did chronology play in the stories of your life? Was there a method to determine the transition of time within the narrative?
SR: Chronology was a major concept for me in this book. Poets tend not to think chronologically. We love ellipsis, sleight of hand, disappearing acts, lacunae, leaps. You can write a memoir with all of that. But this piece of prose told me it needed to be told in a chronological order. Sometimes if you wait long enough the writing tells you what it will be. I think in the beginning of any writing usually we sit down with our egos and we know best what the writing “should” be, how the tale will be told. But my experience has been that if I wait and I keep rewriting, one magical moment the writing will start to tell me what it wants to be about. I suppose that sounds kind of mystical but I think it is true or it has been true for me. The ego has to die some for writing to be any good. Memoir is a curious art and one I resisted. I didn’t like the word. It sounded pompous, and yet I kept going towards it for this book. What I needed to write suited the genre. So I had to plod through my brain and think what happened when, then I had to decide what was significant to the story as a whole. It was like having a long clothesline and slowly over 18 years putting up clothespins to signify different moments.
CTS: At one point in the book, your mother questioned your sexuality. At that time, you did not discuss how you were really feeling. Can you tell us more about self-discovery? How do we evolve as a result of our experiences?
SR: Some things, for whatever reason, are difficult to bring to utterance. Sexuality can often fall into that category. Sex is beyond words. It is the animal of us. And if all of that bubbling inside of you is averse to the societal norm, which homosexuality then was, you’ve got yourself a situation. Many committed suicide. Others who went down with drinking. Others that still today can’t talk about their sexuality openly, usually men my age or older. Silence is powerful. It can be positive and negative. I’ve known it both ways.
CTS: When writing about these memories, how did you balance the voice of your younger self with the present? Was it difficult to transition between POV and how important was the placement of dialogue in this work?
SR: Dialogue was magic. It moved the story along. It could be freighted and weighted. I’d never used dialogue like that with poetry. You don’t usually. To answer your other question, the discipline of writing about a younger self is not to jump the gun, to be measured, when you are young you don’t know what is coming, you have to write the scene that way, even if you know very well what is coming. The writing has to surprise you. Now of course you can’t remember exact dialogue from when you are six, so there, within the memoir, is some invention: one tries very hard, or I did, to be true to the recalled emotion at the time. The dialogue with my mother fighting with my father’s family definitely happened: I remember clearly the thunder of it.
CTS: How has the pandemic affected your writing? What’s next for you?
SR: The pandemic was a time of quiet. I was unusually productive and the end result was a new job, moving to New York City, the publication of the prose, the watercolor book ( a complete pandemic surprise) and a chapbook. I will publish a book of poems, Acts, with FSG in 2024. But actually, and this surprises me, I want to know more about the painting world. I am going to Vermont next week to take a class for a week. I want to explore that other brother art more now that I have published that little book of hours. I don’t know where that goes! An art without words feels liberating to me. I will also publish a book of essays on living poets called Later Prophets. I call them appreciations. That book still needs a ton of work and isn’t even finished and I might need to do something with it structurally that I don’t understand yet. What is ahead? I move towards expansion and freedom. I move humbly and placidly. Peace means more than I can say at 58. I’ll do anything to get it.
