On Wednesday, Feb. 12, there were more people than chairs in the Wheelock House, the Christian Living Learning Community and former home of Eleazar Wheelock. Spencer Reece, a visiting poet and Episcopalian priest, stood at the front of the room like it was a Sunday service. He led the group in “Shalom,” a call-and-response prayer begetting peace. As I repeated the Hebrew benediction, moving from whispers to shouts, I felt aware of how rarely an opportunity arises to join a group of strangers and sing without shame.
Mae Rusconi ’27, who attended the reading with her creative writing class, CRWT 12, “Introduction to Poetry,” described the experience as “really intensely intimate … being in a religious space, everyone kind of whispering together.”
Reece was invited to celebrate the completion of Wheelock House’s renovation by Sarah Clark, a friend of his, who owns the local Scale House Print Shop and acts as editor-in-chief at Fare Forward, a Christian magazine. According to Reece, he met Clark at one of his public readings at the Yale Divinity School almost 10 years ago. The two have been in touch ever since.
Reece came to the Wheelock House to share his poetry — particularly his newest collection “Acts,” released in May 2024. While he has been writing poetry since high school English classes, Reece did not become a priest until after the release of his first publication decades later. Before this shift, he worked in retail. Afterward, his work took him to the girls orphanage Our Little Roses in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and the Spanish Episcopal Church in Madrid, Spain.
In an interview after the reading, he said his trajectory toward faith was closely intertwined with his career as a poet. He particularly called upon the moment he was awarded the 2003 Bakeless Prize by notable American poet Louise Glück for his work “The Clerk’s Tale.”
“When my first book was published with Louise Glück, she said that she felt there was religious passion in the work, which is really strange because I wasn’t talking to her about becoming a priest, but it all kind of led to that,” Reece said.
Reece’s path toward religion was winding, as he joined the church independently after participating in the 12-step program. In our interview, Reece elaborated on the story of how he came to be a poetic and religious figure.
“I felt like an outsider as a gay person,” he said. “I didn’t think that organized religion really had a place for people on the margins, which is ironic, because Jesus’s entire message is based on people in the margins. Poetry gave me a private world of solace to work things out.”
As a member of Reece’s audience, I got the strange sense I knew him well. Partway through the reading, he stopped to acknowledge a surprise visit from his old friend, Vanity Fair editor Michael Gross. At another point, Reece chatted back and forth with a student in the audience who, like himself, was raised in Minnesota. Reece approached each audience member with attention and care, warming the room with his theatricality.
“I really appreciated Father Reece’s stage presence,” English and creative writing administrator Katherine Gibbel said. “At a poetry reading, you know, there is some sort of breaking that fourth wall.”
The poet’s performance ability made him particularly adept at navigating the reading, perhaps due to practice during sermons.
Reece carefully captures himself within his poetic devices and shares them with his audience. In an artform where metaphor and simile are meant to convey complicated feelings, Reece weaves stories out of the different facets of his life — from including his time as a hospital chaplain in Hartford, Conn. in the poem “ICU” to capturing his job as a sales associate at Brooks Brothers at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., in “The Clerk’s Tale.”
Reece’s patient dedication to poetry throughout his adulthood is particularly inspiring. His career was catalyzed by publication of “The Clerk’s Tale” in The New Yorker after it was rejected from publication elsewhere 300 times. Since that poem’s publication in 2003, his writings have included a memoir, three collections, a book of watercolors and a book of poems co-written with the girls of Our Little Roses.
The zig-zag of Reece’s professional life is a testament to his trust in his guiding principles. It was an especially comforting sentiment for a person at the edge of graduation, like myself.
Through his poetry, I could sense the dedication that Reece feels to each of the distinct roles he has held throughout his life. Reece reveres humanity through careful examination of his quotidian moments; he humanizes religion in his cathartic and personal depiction of saints. Reece’s role in the priesthood positions him well to employ religious symbolism in his poetry, and his urgent expression of personal truths allows for even the most secular audience to see themselves in his work.
“It was really observational,” Rusconi said. “I got a good sense of his way of looking at the world. It felt very vulnerable, but at the same time, he felt like he was in control.”
I believe there is an intersection between poetry and spirituality — a fervent emotionality, a desire to explain one’s world, an attempt to be understood. Reece nods to a similar understanding of this relationship: as a reverend at St. Paul’s Church in Wickford, R.I., his programming includes an author series in collaboration with a local library.
“Almost 90% of [the visiting authors] don’t go to church, although I would say almost 90% of them are on a spiritual search through their poetry, and if you just squinted a little bit, they all sort of looked like priests talking,” Reece said during our interview.
In his newest collection, “Acts,” Reece explores individuals on the margins of Christian tradition — Mary Magdalene, a follower of Jesus and rumored prostitute, and Saint Sebastian, patron saint of the LGBTQ+ community. With gentle irony, honest narrative and a strong sense of place, Reece invites readers of any or no faith to worship love and forgiveness.
“I was influenced a lot by the Spanish Civil War poets, in particular, Antonio Machado and Federico Garcia Lorca,” Reece said. “The other literary influence for that book is Paul in the New Testament and letter writing. We don’t write letters the way we used to, and I wanted to remember that sound.”
The sound of letter writing — echoic and isolated yet wholly received and intimate — was certainly heard at the Wheelock House. Reece left me particularly aware that to write and read poetry is an act of divulgence that creates connection.
I have always found readings to be an interesting insight into new poets. These events invite an audience into community, both with the writer themselves and the others experiencing the same sounds and sensations. Reece’s reading was special, however, in his acute awareness of the power of congregating and in his willingness to share himself. My brief insight into Reece’s life and work left me with a depth of appreciation for his poetry and for the serendipity that brought me to a reading that lingers on my mind.
Rating: ★★★★★
