Spencer Reece is a poet and priest. His first collection, The Clerk’s Tale, won the Bakeless Prize in 2003, and he followed it with the collection The Road to Emmaus (2014). He has received an NEA grant, a Guggenheim grant, the Witter Bynner Prize from the Library Congress, and the Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship. His poems have been published in The New Yorker, Poetry, The American Scholar, and The New Republic. Last year, he served as the chaplain to the Bishop of Spain for the Reformed Episcopal Church, Iglesia Español Reformada Episcopal. Currently he is completing a book of prose, The Little Entrance, about his decision to become a priest in middle age.
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The Clerk's TalePoemsFrom"A Clerk’s Tale"
Mostly I talk of rep ties and bow ties,
of full-Windsor knots and half-Windsor knots,
of tattersall, French cuff, and English spread collars,
of foulards, neats, and internationals,
of pincord, houndstooth, nailhead, and sharkskin.
I often wear a blue pin-striped suit.
My hair recedes and is going gray at the temples.
On my cheeks there are a few pimples.
For my terrible eyesight, horn-rimmed spectacles.
The Clerk's Tale:Poems -
The Clerk's TalePoemsFrom"A Bestiary [v. The Elephant]"
In my monk cell,
my trunk coils –
a crucifix
or a question mark.
Which one of you
unscrewed me
from the blue jungle
like a chandelier
and placed me here?
The Clerk's Tale:Poems -
The Clerk's TalePoemsFrom"Triptych [ii. Homosexuality]"
After my mother and father fight,
my father takes my hand
and we walk down to the Mississippi
where he smokes Camel cigarettes.
He flicks his ashes away from me.
He rarely says my name.
All day on TV, I watch monks
in Saigon douse themselves in gasoline
and light their saffron robes on fire.
When they ignite, they do not cry out.
I study their silence to comprehend
how a tongue turns into flame.
The Clerk's Tale:Poems
“For Spencer Reece, humbling is a given. Even though his language in The Road to Emmaus, his first book since his ordination, is often remarkably inventive and sometimes formally elegant, the poems’ tone never betrays awareness of his achievement . . . There’s a quality of devotion in all of these that can make the secular seem sacred. One can truly attend through attention, the writing suggests, and the poems manage to be unwavering—almost unvarying—in the quality of their gaze.” —Jonathan Farmer, Slate
“Reece follows up his acclaimed first book with a gorgeous series of poems in verse and prose about a middle-aged man's coming to terms with religious faith, going as far as becoming a priest, a hospital chaplain, and a quiet chronicler of everyday suffering . . . These poems compassionately describe all the stops along this journey, which leads across America and elsewhere, always inviting readers to respond: ‘it was an interview, much of life is an interview.’” —Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR [on The Road to Emmaus]
“ . . . twin currents of detached humor and sorrow . . . run through [Reece’s] début collection. The most effective poems here are autobiographical, recording early family life; a period spent recovering from a nervous breakdown in hospitals and borrowed houses (‘My legacy is to leave the room empty’); and a new life in retail—hence the title. Reece's poems are saved from solipsism by a keen alertness to the characters around him and to the consolations of the natural world.” —The New Yorker [on The Clerk’s Tale]
Selected Works
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- Print Books
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