Acts by Spencer Reece Reviewed by Alexis David

Acts by Spencer Reece

Reviewed by Alexis David

Publisher: ‎Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Publication date: ‎May 28, 2024

Print length‏: ‎128 pages

ISBN: 978-0374100834

Love, Doubt, Wonder, Faith: 

A Review of Spencer Reece’s Acts 

What is the difference between poetry and prayer? Between poet and priest? Between artistic act and act of devotion? 

“Would it be fair to say– / all art wants the truth?” Spencer Reece writes in his book of poems, Acts, which came out with Farrar, Straus and Giroux last year. 

//love//

Maybe there isn’t any difference at all. Maybe a poem is a prayer. Maybe “poetry is next to Christ.” And, maybe “poetry is radical love.” Isn’t radical love what the divine is? I tend to think so. Reece writes about the importance of love in his poem, “Little Compton Psalm,” “Whatever / the crisis / the answer / is love.” 

In Acts, poetry is born from religion, from Reece’s Episcopal priesthood. At times, it is confessional. There is a beautiful long poem entitled, “Letters from Spain” in the first third of the book. It reads like a travel log–a priest (Reece) far from home (Rhode Island) has journeyed to Madrid to serve as an assistant to El Obispo, the Bishop. It is cold in this church, “I write with my coat on / and there’s no hot water in the sink.” He is too American; “Spaniards/do not hug when they first meet. Awkward . . .My ways stand out.” Reece writes of his displacement in Spain, “When Spaniards speak fast I’m lost.” This section is also a study of El Obispo,

            Something sings through the mildew.
            Is it El Obispo, who has a fish and three small birds?
            Every morning now he tenderly addresses them
            among the plants he has planted in rusted oil drums

This image is simple, yet gorgeous: a line Reece walks very delicately throughout these pages. The inclusion of the fish and the birds, the growing plants in the old, rusted out oil drums. What a gorgeous image of hope amongst decay. There is a song singing through the mildew–maybe a bird. The church in Spain has its own kind of poverty; the poetry, like the religion, uplifts the church, makes it special, makes the Bishop someone the poet admires and wants to understand. 

This section, “Reyes,” abounds with desire. A desire for a companion, “I found a man named Manuel on an app.” A desire to understand the Bishop, “Often the birds get stolen. He looks sad then. / Only I see this.” 

Reece is often able to turn the poems in simple, yet lovely ways–often centering the poem on something literal, something quite ordinary. In “Cotidano” (which means “daily”), he writes of his daily tasks, “I shuffle papers, check email, write letters” and then ends the poem with him cleaning the “dirty rag rug.” He writes, “I use the broken taped vacuum that fails to suck.” Here, Reece intertwines the ordinary with the divine. The church with the AA meetings. The Bishop with ear hair. The lack of heat with the desire to help other people. This poetry is important because it is about our ordinary lives and the inner callings of our hearts: our desire to connect with one another, to help one another. 

//doubt//

Reece’s epigraph for Acts is a quote from the American photographer Diane Arbus, “The thing that is important to know is that you never know.” Perhaps, for Reece, both poetry and his priesthood is his way of exploring his own doubt: “I’ll try not to sound sure about what’s unsure.” Here, Reece offers us humility. Even priests are unsure. 

Jonathan Farmer writes on The Paris Review blog, that for Reece, “poetry and Christianity seem inextricable, which is also the case in his writing, where his audible love of accuracy abides in an equally audible humility—a willingness to move in mystery and honor the sometimes-slow-to-manifest potential for beauty and love.” These poems do “move in mystery.” I read the book quickly, hungrily, as if Reece could answer some large question I have. I’m not entirely sure what my question was, but I found solace in Reece’s work. 

In the later section of Acts, Reece conveys his ability to help the aging and dying: “Bless the mechanical hospital bed– / split side rails, controls, casters, alarms–/the room sours with the scent of used diapers.” Prayer circles around hospital machines, amidst the smell of diapers. Suicide is intermixed with fruit: “A friend took his life out in California / where the mangoes and strawberries grow.” These poems are luscious and knowledgeable, awake to both the beauty and difficulty of the human world. 

//wonder//

Reece writes poetry in ways that made me question whether these poems were even poems at all? Were they letters? Was this a travel log of a missionary trip to Madrid? Was this actually a novel (there are numerous narrative threads)? How did he get such simple statements to sing? I found myself touched, delighted, inspired:

            O Israel
            help me
            arise

            recount
            recalibrate
            save

            dispatch
            a story
            of tenderness 

The tenderness and vulnerability that Reece writes these poems feels accompanied by the displacement of being in Spain: “My country? Did I have a country?” In Little Compton Psalm, he responds to his own nomadic lifestyle, “Where is / my home? / Vagabond, I drip / with Easter,” by listening to the bird song of the warblers he finds a sense of comfort for “their opera / of transience.” And perhaps the home he feels is in his relationship to the divine, “I belonged to the Lord. / People laughed when I said that. / I no longer cared.”  

//faith//

So, why is this book so appealing? And yet, also so mysterious? Mary Ruefle writes in a conversation with Lisa Ggras, “Song, which I am equating with poetry, creates a feeling in the hearer; if the feeling gives pleasure, you have understood the song.” And so, if you feel pleasure from a poem, you have understood it. 

I found Acts because I read Reece’s poem, “Madrigal” in the April 2025 edition of The New Yorker. I was moved to tears by the poem, which, for me, was about aging parents and the grief that comes with the end of their lives. The poem is both hopeful and sad, “I will see them both soon enough.” That’s what I like about it. Reece’s poem reminded me of David Baker’s poetry for its colloquial start and circular ending, “Minnesota, I hardly know you anymore.” And, also Christian Wiman, for Reece’s interest in Christianity and theology. 

I turned to Reece’s poetry for a reason, although I’m not entirely sure what that reason is. Maybe I was looking for a priest, and instead, found a poet. In a kind poem, “Y echàndolo fuera de la ciudad, le apedrearon,” Reece writes about his mother who has “lost language like luggage.” He writes, “My old love, / my love who gave me language that I love, / when there are no words, there are only acts.” 

What is the difference between a poem and a prayer? Maybe one is made of language and one is an act. I don’t know. And, maybe that doubt cocoons itself until it butterflies out into wonder. Maybe that doubt turns itself into a faith that propels us forward through these, our strange and beautiful lives, which Reece chronicles so divinely. 

1 April 2026