Reece, Spencer: Acts (HB)

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, hardcoverPublication Date: May 28, 2024Publisher Marketing: A book of poems that reckons with love in all its forms, by the priest and poet Spencer Reece—his first collection in ten years. . . . My old love, my love who gave me language that I love, when there are no words, there are only acts. Spencer Reece, a poet and an Episcopal priest, suffuses his poetry with tenderness, humanity, and a wonderous alchemy of beauty and sorrow. As the Nobel laureate Louise Glück wrote, "emanating from Spencer Reece's work [is] a sense of immanence that belongs more commonly to religious passion; it is a great thing to have it again in art." Acts, the third book of poetry by Reece, is the product of a decade of work and of a life acutely lived. In it, he celebrates the language and literature of Spain and tracks his tenure at the Spanish Episcopal Church. At times, the collection is a love letter to Madrid; at other moments, to Old Lyme, Connecticut, where the speaker's pa