After After Lorca: Anamnesis and Magic between Jack Spicer and Federico García Lorca

Abstract

This essay will examine the work of Jack Spicer through the lens of Federico García Lorca’s homages and his concept of the dark earth inspiration called duende to explore the bonds created through imagined lovers, mostly looking at works proposing relationship through affect, apostrophe, and homoerotics. Spicer communicated with García Lorca in his book After Lorca, which Spicer saw as a direct channeling of the poet and his magic-imbued poetics via translation. In Spicer’s work, anamnesis and homage are attempts to unify the writer with the object of channeling—the “same-like” person with whom the author identifies. The act of imagining or channeling a similar writer into conversation provides a direct link to creativity for Spicer and others like him, who write in the vein of queer magic in order to create and perpetuate lineage and connection to the sexual world despite distances of time and space. Uncovering this perspective within the writings of García Lorca and Spicer allows a deeper and more empathetic rereading of both as queer poets and poets interested in writing-as-magic. This likewise encourages a deeper and fuller imitation of these writers by contemporary kin working into queer lineages.