The young Jack Spicer

In Jacket 37

John Tranter

[»»] Jack Spicer’s The Book of the Death of Arthur, by Jim Goar
[»»] Jack Spicer: Kevin Killian: Jack Spicer’s Secret
[»»] Jack Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian. Reviewed by Mark Terrill.

December 24, 2012

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Jack Spicer

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John Tranter founded this magazine in 1997. He has published more than twenty collections of verse, and has edited a number of poetry anthologies. His book «Urban Myths:210 Poems: New and Selected» (2006) won a number of major Australian prizes, and his latest book, «Starlight: 150 Poems», won the Melbourne «Age» Book of the Year poetry award and the Queensland Premier's Award for Poetry, both in 2011. As well as writing and editing poetry he has been a teacher, a publisher's editor, and a radio producer.

John Tranter portrait

Photo: John Tranter, photo Anders Hallengren, Sydney, 2009

In October 1997 he founded the free Internet magazine «Jacket», and in 2010, after forty published issues, he granted «Jacket» to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where it grows and flourishes as «Jacket2». In his spare time he founded the Australian Poetry Library at http://poetrylibrary.edu.au/ which publishes over 40,000 Australian poems online. He is a Doctor of Creative Arts and is an Honorary Associate in the University of Sydney School of Letters, Arts and Media, and an honorary member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is married with two children and currently lives in Sydney. Please feel free to browse by his Journal at johntranter.net and his vast homepage at johntranter.com.

From John Tranter: Hi. I have been asked to write a Commentary for «Jacket2» for a few months, starting in October 2012. Generally I sit in a rocker on the back porch, sipping from a jug of hooch and making wisecracks through the screen door; I guess the editors want to make me more useful. Well, hang around. I plan to look at some history -- how did I get here? -- and look at some of my favorite items in the forty issues of «Jacket» which I edited, including British, Canadian, European, Spanish-American and Australian poetry and creative and critical writing, and the ferment of the USA, and from time to time I will talk about other things that interest me including photography, printing, typography and the management of the philosophical tendencies of the common capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris).

Two Capybaras

Photo: Two capybaras anxiously discussing Wittgenstein's apparent rejection of some of the key propositions of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921).

Jacket2Commentaries feature invited posts by poets and scholars who take a close, serial look at poetry scenes, archives, poetic concerns, or theoretical clusters. Commentaries, although curated, are not edited by Jacket2 staff. We welcome your comments. Send queries and notes to Commentaries Editor Jessica Lowenthal or contact us at this page.

Banner photo at the top of this page: It varies, as the mood takes me... Sometimes it's Cloud and Palm Tree, Sydney, photo by John Tranter and a touch of Photoshop. Uh, no... it keeps changing... Oh well... whatever...

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