Book excerpt: Be Brave to Things shows legendary San Francisco Renaissance poet Jack Spicer at the top of his form, with his blistering intelligence, painful double-edged wit, and devastating will to truth everywhere on display. Most of the poetry here has never before been published, but the volume also includes much out-of-print or hard to find work, as well as Spicer's three major plays, which have never been collected. Here one finds major unfinished projects, early and alternate versions of well-known Spicer poems, shimmering stand-alone lyrics, and intricate extended "books" and serial poems. In writings that range in date from his first days in Berkeley in 1945 through to the final months of his life, 20 years later, one sees the full development of Spicer as a writer, in a volume that complements and completes the award-winning My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer. Readers familiar with Spicer will find countless lines, rhythms, and thoughts that cast new light on old favorites, while the plays reveal a different side of his dialectical and dialogic approach to writing. This new cache of Spicer material will be indispensable for any student of 20th century American poetry, proffering a trove of primary material for Spicer's growing readership to savor and enjoy.