Kelly Writers House hosts poetry editor to discuss book of collected letters

Kelly Writers House hosted a conversation on Nov. 19 with Daniel Benjamin, the co-editor of poet Jack Spicer’s book of collected letters “Even Strange Ghosts Can Be Shared.”

The event was co-hosted by comparative literature & literary theory Ph.D. student Timmy Straw and fourth-year Greek and Latin languages and literature Ph.D. student Julieta Vittore Dutto. The speakers read and analyzed excerpts from the book while audience members were given handouts to follow along.

“Even Strange Ghosts Can Be Shared” features over 300 letters from Spicer to lovers, friends, mentors, and poetic collaborators. 

“There is this kind of discussion that you have to be into to enjoy the text themselves … or get the richness of it,” Dutto said. “I think it called for the format that we had.”

The event created the opportunity “to stage a collective eavesdropping on Jack Spicer's letters” according to Straw. The conversation was meant to “open up a field for people to think through” the letters, as they were not originally intended for the public.

“What exactly is a letter? Are we reading it as a document for Jack Spicer’s life in that moment in time, or are we reading it as a poem?” Dutto said. “He’s really kind of playing with and defying this distinction between letter and poem.”

Benjamin, who currently works as an English teacher at Abington Friends School, was introduced to the poetry of Jack Spicer by a friend in college and went on to write a large portion of his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley on the poet. During this time, he met Kevin Killian, one of Spicer’s literary executors, editors, and biographers, and started collaborating on the collected letters.

Other topics the speakers discussed during the event included how the letters create connection and show tradition across time, Spicer’s perspective as a gay writer, and the complexity of Spicer’s character.

“Poetry is a valuable form of expression for any community,” Benjamin said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian. “It is a practical tool of connection for expressing, ‘this is my experience, and I’m going to share that with other people’ as a way of inviting them to share their own experiences too.”