The Fare Forward Interview with Spencer Reece
Spencer Reece is a poet and Episcopal priest. His first book of poetry, The Clerk’s Tale, won the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize, and his second book, The Road to Emmaus, was longlisted for the National Book Award. He has received a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and A National Endowment of the Arts fellowship. In Madrid he worked as the national secretary of the Episcopal bishop of Spain. He now serves as priest of a parish in Jackson Heights, Queens.
In his recent memoir The Secret Gospel of Mark, Reece looks at his life through the lens of the poetry that, as he says, “saved him.” We talked with him about the book and how his poetry and priesthood work together.
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Interview conducted by Whitney Rio-Ross
Fare Forward: You’re a man of many talents, and you could spend your time writing many books—sermon collections, poetry primers, even do a treatise on theology and poetry—so what made you want to write a memoir?
Spencer Reece: Well, thank you for interviewing me about this book, which took seventeen years from the time I first thought about these thoughts until the book came out on March 16 of 2020. So I did not want to write a memoir. Everything inside of me reacted against that word—it had “me” in it, it sounded narcissistic, it sounded like, “Who was I to write a memoir?”
But as the years wore on, the material kept coming back to that. And I think Chris Wiman would probably agree with this, or maybe you yourself as a published poet would agree with this, that if the poem’s really going to live or move, like that “Road to Emmaus” poem, the material tells you what it’s going to be rather than you telling it what it’s going to be. In the beginning, two decades ago, I told that material that I was going to write academic essays like Helen Vendler that were going to appreciate these poets that I loved so much, as a way of honoring them and thanking them, and this is the book that I would make.
I wrote those essays a long time ago, but they were a little boring. They probably, to be honest, weren’t as good as Helen Vendler. But I did. Some of that material shakes out and remains in the book, and what became the most compelling was a contrapuntal narrative where it was the story of my life mixed in with the biographies of these poets and the literary appreciation of these poets. When I found that way into this book, I knew I had done what I wanted to do, to the best of my ability with my gifts, whatever they were. And so it became a memoir, and I began reading all these memoirs to try to understand nonfiction—although I read a lot of nonfiction, I read a lot of biographies, I read a lot of memoirs, I read a lot of fiction—I didn’t really know how to write. So I think maybe that’s why it took two decades, because I had to teach myself how to write this thing that the thing was saying it was going to be.
Do you find that in your own poetry, that the poems tell you what they’re going to be? Do you find that to be true, that the material—at some point it’s like a shamanistic thing or something—that if you wait long enough (I think this is what happened to Elizabeth Bishop), that the poems kind of take over?
FF: I have found that if I think I know what a poem is going to be, and I’m determined that’s what it’s going to be, it’s almost certainly a bad poem. Because at some point, it has to surprise me. And that’s when it feels like it’s actually being written.
So, once the book became a memoir, it’s really held together by poetry, by particular poets that you use to frame certain years of your life. Did that come naturally once you realized that it was going to be a memoir?
SR: Yes and no. I really had to study structure, which is something that you have to know about if you’re going to write a long, sustained prose narrative. And I had to contemplate—you know, poets think, if I can speak for them (I mean, they’re such a diverse and idiosyncratic lot), but I’m going to attempt to speak for all of them in saying that they don’t usually think in a linear manner. I think they think more like collage or something, but not often chronological or linear. Now you can write a prose that’s not chronological or linear, like I guess The Waves by Virginia Woolf, or you can write—I love Maggie Nelson who wrote The Argonauts. I love that book, and I can’t believe somebody wrote that book, with all this philosophical stuff poured into it, and I don’t think it’s really linear either. So at first I thought that was what I would do, because that seemed comfortable to me.
Again, the book began to say to me that it was going to be very linear, very chronological, almost like a cookie-cutter potboiler style in which you begin with an unresolved moment and then you circle back to the birth of the speaker and go right up to the present. It’s called a “e structure,” you know, [traces an “e” shape in the air] where you start this thing, and then it circles back, goes past that moment, and then goes all the way to the end. I learned all this through the years, because I didn’t know it, even though I had read a lot of things.
Once I knew that was what it was, I began to think, well, which poet fit with which part of my life? Almost in a bigger structural thought, which I think I had in Italy when I was working on this book there. And I thought, well, the beginning of my life, what was it? It was a difficult time, my twenties, it was suicide, it was alcoholism, so then immediately I began thinking of the biographies of the poets I loved the most. And then I knew it was Plath, and then I knew it was Bishop, and then I knew George Herbert came right after that. And then I met James Merrill so I knew that the AIDS period and all the stuff that was happening then fell into James Merrill, and then the part of family estrangement, family reunification, of working in absolute anonymity and isolation was Emily Dickinson without a doubt. And then returning to seminary at Yale, living through a time of extreme closeted behavior, to younger priests being open and out and saying who they were was Hopkins.
And then it took me a long time to figure out how that book closed, because it could have been just another poet, but in the last chapter I tried with Mark Strand—it didn’t really work. He’s in that chapter; I knew him. But I didn’t know him that well, so it didn’t hold up as a final poet. So that final chapter is me in the world as an ordained person, meeting my colleagues who are of different races, different cultures, all that that’s going on in the poetry world. This kind of re-address came into that chapter, and ultimately the framing sensibility for the last chapter is Jesus Christ, who said, “Follow me.” And so that’s how the book ended organically, but it took a long time to get there. It took all seventeen years to get that.
You know, my first book of poetry got published in my forties after being rejected 300 times, so I have that in my story, that I do not give up. And I don’t crack.
FF: Was there any point over those seventeen years where you thought, “Never mind. I’m done.”? Or did you know that you needed to finish it?
SR: There were times I was really, really frustrated, and I wanted to throw it on the ground. And Mark Doty came to give a reading in Madrid, because I started an author series there that led into a festival, and I just said to him (I mean this was years ago in Madrid), I said, “I just can’t do this. It’s just not working. I’m a poet, I’m not a nonfiction writer.” And he said, “Really?” He said, “I’m just too stubborn, I couldn’t give up.” And he encouraged me. We went to dinner and he looked at a new poem I was writing. That meant a lot, because the years in Madrid, I was in some ways isolated from an American poetry conversation. So I guess I’m just really tenacious.
You know, my first book of poetry got published in my forties after being rejected 300 times, so I have that in my story, that I do not give up. And I don’t crack. And I go on, and I go on, and I go on, even though I go through really tough times. And I don’t know where—maybe that comes from my mother, or maybe my father. Or maybe running track in high school, because I think you learn that in sports. Even though I was not a great track star like my father, who went to Duke on a scholarship, I did the same sports that he did, and I still remember the coach just saying, “Even if you’re the last, you have to finish the race.” And I was often the last, which was so unlike my father. But I learned to finish the race. And that has stayed with me my whole life. I didn’t expect to be talking about sports, but that is very true, and I think that’s where it comes from.
So with the memoir, I think I just wasn’t going to give up, and I put that in the end of the book, because I want people to know how difficult it is to get a book published. And I thought, they need to read that you get a literary agent, they don’t work out, you get another one, it goes through lots—that book was rejected 35 times, and when my mother was in the hospital and we didn’t know if she was going to live or die, that’s when I got the call that the book had been accepted. But it was on the last places, Seven Stories Press was the last place they were going to try before they were going to hibernate the book for another two years and wait for there to be new people that were going to acquire books. So I mean, even right up to the end, it was not a quick fix for Spencer Reece.
I think my goal is to tell the truth.
FF: In the memoir and in your poetry, you write about many topics that I think most people would find it difficult to talk about. Some are sexuality and shame, alcoholism, painful family situations—were there any topics, or are there any topics, that you have found particularly difficult to address? And if so, what has made you still decide, I need to write about this?
SR: I think my goal is to tell the truth. And when you write a memoir, you sign up for a new drawing class. There’s just no way you can work in this form and not be, or I couldn’t be, naked. And the subject matter that I was going to be dealing with—the question that people asked me the most after my first book in years past was, why did I decide to become an Episcopal priest? Why did I do that? And I don’t exactly know the answer, which is great, to have a question that you can’t quite answer, because that propels a narrative. And my sexuality as an American that was born in the 60s, grew up in the 70s, lived through the 80s, 90s—and that was a big piece of that.
I was in Camden Town in London with one of the editors from Granta Magazine as I was working on this book. A guy named Luke Neima, who encouraged me to continue with the book—a young, young guy in his twenties, very smart—said the book really needed to begin with the most unresolved moment of my life. In this pub in Camden Town, immediately I saw the image of myself at seventeen, naked with a stolen Playgirl Magazine, masturbating, and I was just like Oh my God, I don’t want to write that! But that moment was so unresolved, and I completely wanted to die, and I certainly didn’t think there was a place for me in the world, let alone the church. And it was the keyhole through which the book would be unlocked. You know, poetry’s different from the nonfiction, and so the expectations are different. I don’t write a lot about sex, I don’t think, in poetry. It’s usually pretty flat and not that interesting. And really there’s not much sex in this book. It’s important, but only as a vehicle to get where I’m going, for me.
I guess as I get older I want to be kind to other people I’m writing about. Mary Karr talks about if you’re going to be hard on anybody, be hard on yourself. And if I was writing in detail about a person and it was sensitive material in this memoir, I did speak to the person and get their permission. I’m thinking of Mary Jane, who’s my Al-Anon sponsor. Her jaw is not like a normal jaw, and a lot of kids made fun of her, and boys made fun of her in high school. It was never corrected, and this was a painful topic for her. And I felt that needed to be in the book, and I read the whole thing to her. So I think as long as you’re going with love, you’ll be fine. And I’ve evolved in those attitudes as I’ve gotten older. I suppose the people I was most worried about were my mom and my dad. And as happens in the memoir, the minute I knew the book was going to be published, I had been told by the doctor in charge of my mother’s care that the massive stroke that had left her fully handicapped in twenty-four-hour care also left her without the ability to read, so it was like I felt it was going to be okay. Not that I was mean about her in that book at all. I love my mom to the end of the earth, but I knew she wouldn’t probably want to read what I had written. My father did later read the book, though I tried to avoid that happening, and it brought us closer together.
FF: One of the topics you write about—refreshingly candidly—is the depth of your frustration during all those years when you were receiving so many rejections as a young poet before winning a huge book prize. What advice would you give to aspiring poets maybe in that same situation or similar ones?
SR: I love poetry more than anything. I just love it. I don’t even know why I love it. Just go with your love of it. I mean, the world is not fair. The Bible never says the world is going to be fair; if you’re using that as your lens on justice, it doesn’t say it’s going to be fair. Things are political. Prizes are political. People know people. I mean, all these things are at play in the poetry world. I think there’s a lot of integrity in the poetry world as well, and people doing the best that they can. How my book got accepted by Louise Glück out of a thousand books will remain a mystery. I didn’t know Louise. Louise didn’t know me. It was a clean competition in that regard. There was absolutely no connection between the pre-screeners and me. It was completely blind. And working with her was like a magical experience. It was worth the wait.
And now as I’ve gone on, I’m more generous. I’m creating authors’ series, festivals, opportunities for more poets to be seen because I know what it did for me, and I just want to spread it around. And so you just have to keep running around the track and finish the race and do it because you love doing it. And sometimes, even as you go on—say you get a first book prize—continue to hold on to doing it because you love doing it. I support and am involved in the lives of a lot of younger poets now in a mentoring kind of capacity, which just organically has evolved that way. And I just try to encourage them and support them and create opportunities for them to join into things. We’re all in it together. Anne Sexton said that every poet was adding their square to the quilt, that all poetry was a big, giant quilt, and everyone was adding their little patch.
My Christianity is about unconditional love, about expansion.
FF: Like Hopkins and Herbert, who are two of the poets that you address in the memoir, you’re both a poet and a priest. And those vocations have come together in various ways since your ordination, as you write about in the book. How would you say your priesthood has influenced you as a poet?
SR: Well, I know the Bible a lot better, and I’m even getting to know it really well this year because I’ve taken over a parish where angels fear to tread. The past priest died of COVID-19. The church is in Jackson Heights, Queens, and it’s a humble church with not a lot of resources, and so I’m preaching almost every single Sunday in two languages. It’s a lot of preaching, so I’m really getting a workout. So maybe it was always going to go in this direction. I mean, the first book was called The Clerk’s Tale, which is about Christian pilgrimages, referencing Christian pilgrimages from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. And, you know, from the beginning I was moving in this direction without realizing I was moving in this direction. So my book of poems that’s under contract with Farrar, Straus, & Giroux is called Acts, after the book of Acts, and it’s very inspired by things that are happening in the book of Acts. And the last book was called Road to Emmaus, which is my favorite story in the whole Bible.
And so it just informs everything because it’s my life. It’s what I’m doing 24/7, and it’s an honor—I sometimes feel unworthy of it—and it’s taken me all over the world. It’s because I became a priest that I became bilingual from the emergency rooms of Hartford. And this third book of poetry that’s going to come out about ten years after Emmaus is very influenced by Spanish translation. There’s a lot of Spanish in it, in the book, which is all informed by my years in Honduras and Spain and now in Jackson Heights.
FF: You encountered and loved most of the poets in your book before you were a priest or even confirmed in the Episcopal Church. Did Christianity change how you thought about or read these poems that formed you as a younger man?
SR: My Christianity is growing and evolving as I age. My Christianity is about unconditional love, about expansion. There’s a very sad story about Sylvia Plath. It’s not in the book, but I read it in this recent, amazing biography by a woman named Heather Clark. It’s called Red Comet, and it’s very well researched and opens up whole new vistas on the life of Sylvia Plath. And there’s this one scene of her in which she was in her house. Ted Hughes had left. She was in the house—it’s a big house. It was the biggest house in this little town, and it was next to the Episcopal/Anglican church. And one Sunday, as her depression was mounting and was going to swallow her up, she went to church. She actually went to church. And the priest was this kind of throwback to, you know, misogynist fire and brimstone. She was just completely turned off, and I just think Damn! What would have happened if it was a different kind of message in that moment? And that seems very sad to me.
My faith, if I’m really following Jesus, is about non-judgment, is about non-violence, is about compassion, is about those things. And has that changed my view of these poets? I’m grateful to be alive now. If I think of Hopkins, because he was so closeted, he was so self-lacerating, and I understand it. I feel a debt of gratitude for the suffering that he went through and that I’m in a totally different time. George Herbert’s sound and faith is very clear, and I would hope that I could attempt to get the closest to his sound because I love that sound. I think he’s the person I would most like to be like. And Elizabeth Bishop—I just love, I love, love, love every single syllable. I think I’m a lot like her. There’s a certain sensibility that seems very similar, a kind of withholding in some ways, shyness or whatever it is. As a Christian priest, I don’t long or wish she was somehow a Christian. I mean, it wasn’t her. But I’m very informed by those poems. And they feel to me very important.
FF: In the memoir you say that poetry saved you, and you even say rhyme evangelized you. How is poetry operating in your life post that salvation? In particular, how is it a part of your spiritual life or how you practice your Christianity?
SR: Well, like I said, since I’ve been a priest the poetry has kind of melded with my ministry as a priest. I was first sent to Nuestras Pequenas Rosas, which is the orphanage for the abandoned girl child in Honduras. There’s 250,000 orphans in Honduras, and there’s only one orphanage for girls. There are seventy girls there at any given time. It’s been in existence for thirty-five years. So the first thing I ended up doing was making this documentary film and then putting together a collection of their poems in Spanish and English. Poetry had never been introduced into their lives. And so I felt that having a third thing in the room would unlock something special because it’s so close to the spirit. I think Kant says that. You know he did this pyramid scheme, and at the top of the pyramid the art that was the closest to God was poetry because it required the least amount of materials. You could take it with you wherever you go, whereas architecture, for example, requires a lot, or putting on a play requires props and all the rest. But a poem, you just memorize it. You don’t even need paper. It’s inside of you, and so he thought that that was the closest art to God, and I think he was on to something.
So then I went to Madrid, and this author series started and just blew up into this first-ever international Anglophone literary festival incorporating the story of Atilano Coco, who was the priest that was killed, body never found, by Franco’s troops. I began to learn all about Franco and the Spanish Episcopal Church and how it suffered, and so again poetry played a role in all that. It brought so many people to the cathedral. We had over eighty guests that came from around the world to participate in that festival. We made an anthology. We supported an independent bookstore. And here in Jackson Heights we started a meditation series with a poem. A poet just reads one poem. Ten minutes of silence, they read the poem again. It’s become extremely popular. We’re making broadsides this year.
And so all these gestures are sharing what’s been given to me. It began with my high school English teacher and then further beyond my wildest dreams with the Bakeless Prize and Louise Glück. My world opened beyond my wildest dreams. I’m going to be fifty-eight in another week, and I’m in a moment of sharing what I have with the next generation. And so poetry, as a priest, is just coming out in all of these ways in a world where organized religion is a harder sell, creating an opportunity that might at first seem secular, but it’s really all under the umbrella of what I do, which is I’m an ordained Episcopal priest.
FF: Are there any poets who have been framing your experiences lately, or are there any poems that you’ve been returning to these days?
SR: Yeah. The Spanish Civil War poets, Antonio Machado and Neruda and Federico García Lorca and thinking about those poems and thinking about their lives. Especially there’s a famous, famous, famous poem by Antonio M. called “Caminante, no hay camino (Cantares)”. It’s this famous poem that I once read in a sermon in Madrid, and it was like an out-of-body experience because literally the whole two hundred people for the food distribution began to recite the poem with me. It was very moving. I had no idea that everybody knew this poem. The poem is basically saying, “There is no road. You make the road as you go. And as you’re making the road, the road disappears.” And this was very impactful during the Spanish Civil War, but it’s also quite of the sound of the Christian life. I mean, there’s no place to lay your head, Jesus says. I’m a pilgrim, which goes back to The Clerk’s Tale, right? I’m just sort of walking along, learning what I can while I can. So I guess I’ve been thinking the most about that.
This book is about not turning away from Christianity—still it being deeply flawed—and finding faith, finding hope, finding it initially through poetry and the power of poetry.
FF: My last question is who would you say you wrote The Secret Gospel of Mark for? Did you have a particular audience in mind when you were writing it? Or did that evolve over the seventeen years?
SR: I think I wrote it for my mom. Maybe it’s bittersweet because I think it would be too much for her to read it. I know intimate relationships are complex, as you’re probably coming to realize. Maybe I wrote it for myself. There was a great sense of relief when that last edit of the book was made. I thought, my God, my God. I just thought, this is released from me, and I don’t need to go back over it anymore. I think The Book of Acts, the poetry that I’m writing now, is kind of released from autobiography in a way. It’s a different kind of sound in a way from the last two books, which is exciting.
And also I think I wanted a book like that on the shelf. That’s what Toni Morrison said, you know. She couldn’t find her voice or those books of Sula or The Bluest Eye. She couldn’t find them anywhere. So she wrote the book that was missing. And this book is about not turning away from Christianity—still it being deeply flawed—and finding faith, finding hope, finding it initially through poetry and the power of poetry. There wasn’t that book for me during the AIDS crisis; it didn’t exist. And so I wanted this book as a testament, as a gospel.
You know the gospel from Anglo-Saxon means “godspell.” There was a spell God cast on me that I have survived when my cousin was murdered, when my friend died of AIDS, and when others left the world, I felt, too soon. I wanted the book to be there to speak on behalf of those that had already died, that aren’t able to speak. So maybe I also wrote it for John, my murdered cousin. For Nick who died of AIDS and wanted to be a famous poet—was going to be a famous poet, but he died too young. And the book is dedicated to three men who have been supportive of my becoming a priest, so I wrote it for them, too. And I wanted people to know that there is a place at the table for everybody. Everybody has a place at the table. And I did not think that. Even when I was your age, I wasn’t sure there was a place. But it turns out there is.
FF: Well, thank you very much for writing the book and for giving me your time.