The Sealey Challenge, Day Nineteen: The Clerk's Tale by Spencer Reece

 

I am such a huge fan of Spencer Reece, it's almost embarrassing. Here is what Louise Glück says about him in her introduction to The Clerk's Tale, which won the 2003 Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for poetry: 

Spencer Reece has something of Bishop's passion for detail, her scrupulousness, something of Lowell's genius for fixing character in gesture (like Lowell, he also chooses props brilliantly); the wild, inexhaustible fertility of his comparisons is, though, without exact antecedent, except perhaps in the similes and metaphors of children, to which Reece adds unique resources of vocabulary.

That may explain it, in part. I like Bishop, and I love wild comparisons and inventive language, and of course I appreciate intelligence and a wealthy vocabulary.  But I also really enjoy the way Reece looks at the world. So much pain, so much hope.