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The Great Fires
JOYCE'S MOTTO has had much fame but few apostles. Among them, there has been Jack Gilbert and his orthodoxy, a strictness that has required of this poet, now in the seventh decade of his severe life, the penalty of his having had almost no fame at all. In an era that puts before the artist so many sleek and official temptations, keeping unflinchingly to a code of "silence, exile, and cunning" could not have been managed without a show of strictness well beyond the reach of the theater of the coy.
The "far, stubborn, disastrous" course of Jack Gilbert's resolute journey--not one that would promise in time to bring him home to the consolations of Penelope and the comforts of Ithaca but one that would instead take him ever outward to the impossible blankness of the desert--could never have been achieved in the society of others. What has kept this great poet brave has been the difficult company of his poems--and now we have, in Gilbert's third and most silent book, what may be, what must be, the bravest of these imperial accomplishments.
The "far, stubborn, disastrous" course of Jack Gilbert's resolute journey--not one that would promise in time to bring him home to the consolations of Penelope and the comforts of Ithaca but one that would instead take him ever outward to the impossible blankness of the desert--could never have been achieved in the society of others. What has kept this great poet brave has been the difficult company of his poems--and now we have, in Gilbert's third and most silent book, what may be, what must be, the bravest of these imperial accomplishments.
96 pages, Paperback
First published February 13, 1994
About the author
Jack Gilbert
42 books293 followersBorn and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.'s neighborhood of East Liberty, he attended Peabody High School then worked as a door-to-door salesman, an exterminator, and a steelworker. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, where he and his classmate Gerald Stern developed a serious interest in poetry and writing.
His work is distinguished by simple lyricism and straightforward clarity of tone. Though his first book of poetry (Views of Jeopardy, 1962) was quickly recognized and Gilbert himself made into something of a media darling, he retreated from his earlier activity in the San Francisco poetry scene (where he participated in Jack Spicer's Poetry as Magic workshop) and moved to Europe, touring from country to country while living on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Nearly the whole of his career after the publication of his first book of poetry is marked by what he has described in interviews as a self-imposed isolation—which some have considered to be a spiritual quest to describe his alienation from mainstream American culture, and others have dismissed as little more than an extended period as a "professional houseguest" living off of wealthy American literary admirers. Subsequent books of poetry have been few and far between. He continued to write, however, and between books has occasionally contributed to The American Poetry Review, Genesis West, The Quarterly, Poetry, Ironwood, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker.
He was a close friend of the poet Linda Gregg who was once his student and to whom he was married for six years. He was also married to Michiko Nogami (a language instructor based in San Francisco, now deceased, about whom he has written many of his poems). He was also in a significant long term relationship with the Beat poet Laura Ulewicz during the fifties in San Francisco.
His work is distinguished by simple lyricism and straightforward clarity of tone. Though his first book of poetry (Views of Jeopardy, 1962) was quickly recognized and Gilbert himself made into something of a media darling, he retreated from his earlier activity in the San Francisco poetry scene (where he participated in Jack Spicer's Poetry as Magic workshop) and moved to Europe, touring from country to country while living on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Nearly the whole of his career after the publication of his first book of poetry is marked by what he has described in interviews as a self-imposed isolation—which some have considered to be a spiritual quest to describe his alienation from mainstream American culture, and others have dismissed as little more than an extended period as a "professional houseguest" living off of wealthy American literary admirers. Subsequent books of poetry have been few and far between. He continued to write, however, and between books has occasionally contributed to The American Poetry Review, Genesis West, The Quarterly, Poetry, Ironwood, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker.
He was a close friend of the poet Linda Gregg who was once his student and to whom he was married for six years. He was also married to Michiko Nogami (a language instructor based in San Francisco, now deceased, about whom he has written many of his poems). He was also in a significant long term relationship with the Beat poet Laura Ulewicz during the fifties in San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 161 reviews
July 28, 2023
I like this. I like it a lot, with reservations. I've read it before, at the urging of a friend, and I liked it then too, though not enough to urge it on others. But recently I read an interview with Jack Gilbert in the Paris Review series, and by the end I was actually in tears thinking about his life and what he'd said and hadn't said about that life in his interview. This is a guy who knew Ginsburg back in San Francisco before 'Howl', who in all probability was a mentor to Ginsburg, helping him with an early draft of 'Howl'. Who lived not in the city where the party was, but up in some derelict cabin on the outskirts, and anyway moved on quickly enough and went on to live in various parts of the world, not much caring for celebrity or money. A guy who got famous quickly and enjoyed it for about 6 months before moving on and didn't publish another book for 20 years. A serious guy.
OK, so respect. I like that kind of guy - the opposite of 'careerist'. But at the same time you can be too serious, and I guess I wonder if at times Gilbert is just that. His poems are, at their best, like arrows to the heart. In few words, with few adornments, he takes you to a place deep inside - inside him, inside you - where few artists are able to reach. In the poem 'Trying to Have Something Left Over' he speaks of a doomed affair with a woman whose baby he would take care of, throwing him up in the air and whispering 'Pittsburgh' to him each time,
Wow. I think that's beautiful. That Gilbert loves the child that much, that he loves his hometown. And that 'something maybe important that got lost', that is haunting. Does he speak of himself or of the ruined city of steel?
In the poem 'Gift Horses' he's also at his best:
Then he speaks of the pleasures the Devil allows us despite all this:
Again, wow. Maybe this is Gilbert's speciality: to make us glad of the concessions grief allows us. Certainly the landscape of these poems is desolate, but we are left with the sense of a man who knows and enjoys pleasure, and who finds it in unexpected places. Writing often of the death of his wife - in her thirties, from cancer - he clearly knows grief. Yet never does he allow this theme to overwhelm us. Instead he takes us to the places that grief has taken him - to a bare mountaintop where many of the poems take place:
I cannot but love anyone who brings me so vividly into such moments of solitude, which I have lived myself (though all too briefly) and hope to live again. Moments brilliantly illuminating yet almost unbearable.
Gilbert tells it like it is. And I like it. At times, I love it. But at the same time I can't help but feel something is missing. The language is brilliant - the polish, the precision. At times it seems about to keel over into its own parody, but each time he pulls back, just in time. Yet in this control is a sense of something withheld. Perhaps from my imperfect knowledge of poetry, I think of Raymond Carver, of his very informal, conversational take on similar themes. And though I can sense Gilbert's mastery, I can't help but feel that at his best a poet like Carver gives us more, though maybe precisely because he does not work so hard at it. Of course at times Carver slides into self-parody, something that Gilbert never allows himself. But is there a touch of pride in this? For someone clearly so skilled and dedicated, Gilbert's oeuvre is suspiciously thin. After his death, will someone uncover riches undreamed-of among his papers? I would like to think so, but I don't know if I believe it. Childless myself, alone, and having not published for 15 years, I see in these poems a warning: give more, before it's too late.
That said, I am glad for what little Gilbert offers us.
OK, so respect. I like that kind of guy - the opposite of 'careerist'. But at the same time you can be too serious, and I guess I wonder if at times Gilbert is just that. His poems are, at their best, like arrows to the heart. In few words, with few adornments, he takes you to a place deep inside - inside him, inside you - where few artists are able to reach. In the poem 'Trying to Have Something Left Over' he speaks of a doomed affair with a woman whose baby he would take care of, throwing him up in the air and whispering 'Pittsburgh' to him each time,
So that all his life her son would feel gladness
unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined
city of steel in America. Each time almost
remembering something maybe important that got lost.
Wow. I think that's beautiful. That Gilbert loves the child that much, that he loves his hometown. And that 'something maybe important that got lost', that is haunting. Does he speak of himself or of the ruined city of steel?
In the poem 'Gift Horses' he's also at his best:
He lives in the barrens, in dying neighbourhoods
and negligible countries. None with an address.
But still the Devil finds him. Kills the wife
or spoils the marriage.
Then he speaks of the pleasures the Devil allows us despite all this:
... Maybe because he is not
good at his job. I believe he loves us against
his will.
Again, wow. Maybe this is Gilbert's speciality: to make us glad of the concessions grief allows us. Certainly the landscape of these poems is desolate, but we are left with the sense of a man who knows and enjoys pleasure, and who finds it in unexpected places. Writing often of the death of his wife - in her thirties, from cancer - he clearly knows grief. Yet never does he allow this theme to overwhelm us. Instead he takes us to the places that grief has taken him - to a bare mountaintop where many of the poems take place:
... When I hit the log
frozen in the woodpile to break it free,
it makes a sound of perfect inhumanity,
which goes pure all through the valley,
like a crow calling unexpectedly
at the darker end of twilight that awakens
me in the middle of a life.
I cannot but love anyone who brings me so vividly into such moments of solitude, which I have lived myself (though all too briefly) and hope to live again. Moments brilliantly illuminating yet almost unbearable.
Alone with the heart howling
and refusing to let it feed on
mere affection.
Gilbert tells it like it is. And I like it. At times, I love it. But at the same time I can't help but feel something is missing. The language is brilliant - the polish, the precision. At times it seems about to keel over into its own parody, but each time he pulls back, just in time. Yet in this control is a sense of something withheld. Perhaps from my imperfect knowledge of poetry, I think of Raymond Carver, of his very informal, conversational take on similar themes. And though I can sense Gilbert's mastery, I can't help but feel that at his best a poet like Carver gives us more, though maybe precisely because he does not work so hard at it. Of course at times Carver slides into self-parody, something that Gilbert never allows himself. But is there a touch of pride in this? For someone clearly so skilled and dedicated, Gilbert's oeuvre is suspiciously thin. After his death, will someone uncover riches undreamed-of among his papers? I would like to think so, but I don't know if I believe it. Childless myself, alone, and having not published for 15 years, I see in these poems a warning: give more, before it's too late.
That said, I am glad for what little Gilbert offers us.
March 31, 2021
I don't enjoy the poetry of elevated, musical language that defines so many modern poets. It's language that forms a perfect chrysalis, one that only the author and few lucky readers are able to access.
Gilbert lets us in. Oh, he lets us all the way in. He grounds his poetry in scene and detail, dirt and bone, the fine grit when life grinds us down. The poems here are thoughtful, compassionate, and emotionally ruthless when they have to be, a trait of all great poets.
The themes, as well, are present and interrogated. Loss of a great love, getting older, communing with nature, and keeping the heart tidy and ambitious. This is a sterling collection that hits more often than it misses, and the misses are sincere, emotional postmortems nonetheless.
Listen to full reviews at: https://bookclubbed.buzzsprout.com/
Gilbert lets us in. Oh, he lets us all the way in. He grounds his poetry in scene and detail, dirt and bone, the fine grit when life grinds us down. The poems here are thoughtful, compassionate, and emotionally ruthless when they have to be, a trait of all great poets.
The themes, as well, are present and interrogated. Loss of a great love, getting older, communing with nature, and keeping the heart tidy and ambitious. This is a sterling collection that hits more often than it misses, and the misses are sincere, emotional postmortems nonetheless.
Listen to full reviews at: https://bookclubbed.buzzsprout.com/
April 29, 2020
THE FORGOTTEN DIALECT OF THE HEART
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean.
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
Is not a language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.
July 23, 2009
Jack Gilbert is the quintessential Jack of poetry, a man's man but God! I love him. A tender, insightful, powerful writer he conforms to no standards; neither wild nor docile, Gilbert beats to his own heart and it speaks volumes. He is possibly this century's most severely overlooked poet. While other less than stellar poets dominate the skies, Gilbert is the comet streaking across the great fires. His strength lies in his narrative poems and the romantic interlude between words are spare but provocative and profound in their ability to convey certain emotions: Loss, love and spirituality all intertwined.
Sample Poems:
Going Wrong
The fish are dreadful. They are brought up
the mountain in the dawn most days, beautiful
and alien and cold from night under the sea,
the grand rooms fading from the flat eyes.
Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks,
washing them. "What can you know of my machinery!"
demands the Lord. Sure, the man says quietly
and cuts into them, laying back the dozen struts,
getting to the muck of something terrible.
The Lord insists: "You are the one who chooses
to live this way. I build cities where things
are human. I make Tuscany and you go to live
with rock and silence." The man washes away
the blood and arranges the fish on a big plate.
Starts the onions in the hot olive oil and puts
in peppers. "You have lived all year without women."
He takes out everything and puts in the fish.
"No one knows where you are. People forget you.
You are vain and stubborn." The man slices
tomatoes and lemons. Takes out the fish
and scrambles eggs. I am not stubborn, he thinks,
laying all of it on the table in the courtyard
full of early sun, shadows of swallows flying
on the food. Not stubborn, just greedy.
Michiko Nogami (1946-1982)
Is she more apparent because she is not
anymore forever? Is her whiteness more white
because she was the color of pale honey?
A smokestack making the sky more visible.
A dead woman filling the whole world. Michiko
said, "The roses you gave me kept me awake
with the sound of their petals falling."
Sample Poems:
Going Wrong
The fish are dreadful. They are brought up
the mountain in the dawn most days, beautiful
and alien and cold from night under the sea,
the grand rooms fading from the flat eyes.
Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks,
washing them. "What can you know of my machinery!"
demands the Lord. Sure, the man says quietly
and cuts into them, laying back the dozen struts,
getting to the muck of something terrible.
The Lord insists: "You are the one who chooses
to live this way. I build cities where things
are human. I make Tuscany and you go to live
with rock and silence." The man washes away
the blood and arranges the fish on a big plate.
Starts the onions in the hot olive oil and puts
in peppers. "You have lived all year without women."
He takes out everything and puts in the fish.
"No one knows where you are. People forget you.
You are vain and stubborn." The man slices
tomatoes and lemons. Takes out the fish
and scrambles eggs. I am not stubborn, he thinks,
laying all of it on the table in the courtyard
full of early sun, shadows of swallows flying
on the food. Not stubborn, just greedy.
Michiko Nogami (1946-1982)
Is she more apparent because she is not
anymore forever? Is her whiteness more white
because she was the color of pale honey?
A smokestack making the sky more visible.
A dead woman filling the whole world. Michiko
said, "The roses you gave me kept me awake
with the sound of their petals falling."
March 31, 2008
Oh my goodness! What an extraordinary book of poems, a book I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without having in my life. Thanks to Britta for introducing me to this collection.
I like when people share a line or two in their reviews, but I just can't choose so here's a whole poem:
"The Lives of Famous Men"
Trying to scrape the burned soup from my only pan
with a spoon after midnight by oil lamp
because if I do not cook the mackerel
this hot night it will kill me tomorrow
in the vegetable stew. Which is twice
wasteful. Though it would be another way
of cutting down, I am thinking, as I go out to get
more water from the well and happen to look up
through the bright stars. Yes, yes, I say,
and go on pulling at the long rope.
I like when people share a line or two in their reviews, but I just can't choose so here's a whole poem:
"The Lives of Famous Men"
Trying to scrape the burned soup from my only pan
with a spoon after midnight by oil lamp
because if I do not cook the mackerel
this hot night it will kill me tomorrow
in the vegetable stew. Which is twice
wasteful. Though it would be another way
of cutting down, I am thinking, as I go out to get
more water from the well and happen to look up
through the bright stars. Yes, yes, I say,
and go on pulling at the long rope.
May 20, 2008
Um, holy shit, Jack Gilbert.
September 10, 2019
I feel at home here. Why, yes, I am crying.
(Reminded me of As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, which is my favourite work of film)
(Reminded me of As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, which is my favourite work of film)
December 11, 2019
Well goddamn.
December 8, 2012
A curious thing about Gilbert is that for all his enormous cunning, toward his intellect, alas, skepticism remains a reader's best procedure. "The Spirit and the Soul" -- reading that poem, it's as if he doesn't get that these are heavy literary terms, and his minding them will only focus us on his self-mythologizing lexicon, his speaker's "insistence" -- a crucial word throughout -- on what "in the heart lasts". Idioms, as idioms, a way of saying said over and over again -- Gilbert's own "insistent" craft-work on his poems comes to seem to him the whole story of the language he's working in, and it's an aggrandizement deduced from something we after all are prepared to share with him, his sense of the significance of the poet's role.
Of course, the self-mythologizing is what many Gilbert readers love; witness the reviews on this site. Again, too little noticed in this love is the tradition "of the poet" Gilbert toils in. I mean Graves and Riding first of all -- our troubadour-peripatetic worldly poet -- with the basic, "Word Woman" schema on his agenda. ("Sects," a poem in Monolithos, mentions "the old dream of woman.") Gilbert's poems are a persistence in 'the tradition of the poet', a tradition repudiated heavy-handedly among the century's professionalized, academic haters of woman -- Yvor Winters and Allen Tate on Riding; Jarrell on H.D.; Jarrell on Rukeyser; Vendler on Loy; etc. And I'm all for the persistence. Unlike the critical generation invoked above, Gilbert does not appear, for all his Word-Woman schema, to be a homophobe.* Greece is a lure, as Alexandria is for Durrell, because of Cavafy, the tradition of the poet of the cosmopolitan tribe, and the interest in entertainments, in the pornographic novel (as the historical novel was Riding/Graves' interest), is an effort to tune in rhetorically to cosmopolitan ranges of diction. Here's where I read the cunning; the effect of this novelistic positioning within language is to repudiate the professionalized mainstream in American poetry while promising to make the whole work worth reading, vide bad poems and all.
Let's be clear: focusing on how bad Gilbert frequently is does him no justice at all. We may know how crucially marriage tropes for Gilbert, so that in "Betrothed" "the middle of a life" "goes pure" in "perfect inhumanity" when a "black and white of me mated" in "this indifferent winter landscape" and so forth and so on and the thing unravels into its various tropes, the speaker's conviction in which gets to be naturalized all too readily. Whereas at his best Gilbert understands the clarity of perception to be an ineffable triangulation of resemblances, and "Relative Pitch" is an example of this. Three analogies are balanced very carefully: On his way back up the mountain (presumably in Greece) the speaker hears children "playing as though they were happy," and the speaker's uncertainty as to whether they actually could be happy is exposed by the "measure"'s similarity to a man the speaker has heard of in Virginia who took one of Fuller's geodesic domes and renovated it, despite knowing nothing of Fuller. All the renovator had of the prior experience of the house's residents was a chair, from which, Gilbert suggests, the renovator worked his way out to a consideration of the whole. And so these parts of the poem have become, for the speaker, "the religion" "whispered" of "upstairs in the dark, | sometimes in the parlor amid blazing sunlight, | and under trees with rain coming down | in August on the bare unaccustomed bodies." It's Gilbert's tendency to claim this set of resemblances as a sound, a note (on the analogy to music, as in Pound), here a "Relative Pitch," but I actually think the title, like the concept it describes, is only approximate to the perception the poem enacts, which is one of mysterious clarity in solitude.
With many people on this site, nevertheless, then, I would agree that this is Gilbert's best book.
* I wrote this based on the poetry, and on having met Gilbert several times during a brief period he lived in Iowa City in 1984. But as I should have known, these make a poor basis for such a remark, especially since Gilbert is a writer especially concerned to confound the work with "the poet," to essentialize the work as "the man." Subsequent reading turns up that when Gordon Lish asked Gilbert on July 18, 1962, who were the living American poets he read, Duncan and "once upon a time, Ginsberg," are among the named. Lish questions Gilbert further about the figures of whales, elephants, and Alcibiades, in the Views Of Jeopardy poem, Gilbert admits he likes the scale of the former two mammals, and says, of Alcibiades, "It's so much the problem today. It is so much our most endowed people who go wrong -- become corrupt, sexually distorted, criminal, mad. You might just as well call it Evil as it has been so often called to simplify things. But whatever the name, it is clear that Cordelia has little relevance for us except as a lost Eden. What concerns our time is Goneril. That's why insanity, homosexuality, and semi-criminality are so common among poets. These prevent him from escaping into the obliviousness of normal life. Especially in modern times, the poet has a built-in inability to succeed, so he is forced to associate with whales." Lish smartly answers back: "And you intend to continue to live with them by choice?" And Gilbert replies: "Well, I'm not crazy, queer, or crooked!"
What's going on, here, aside from the blandishment about "sexual distortion," which would gain total assent from John Crowe Ransom, is Gilbert playing at the Duncanian "drama of the psyche" as this works itself out in his letting King Lear read his world. He's poaching the "Jocasta" cultural analysis of Laura Riding, and making a mess of it. And letting his own sexual-cultural location "pass" as the unmarked one. It's a kind of minstrelsy he's not entirely aware he's playing. 12/06/12
Of course, the self-mythologizing is what many Gilbert readers love; witness the reviews on this site. Again, too little noticed in this love is the tradition "of the poet" Gilbert toils in. I mean Graves and Riding first of all -- our troubadour-peripatetic worldly poet -- with the basic, "Word Woman" schema on his agenda. ("Sects," a poem in Monolithos, mentions "the old dream of woman.") Gilbert's poems are a persistence in 'the tradition of the poet', a tradition repudiated heavy-handedly among the century's professionalized, academic haters of woman -- Yvor Winters and Allen Tate on Riding; Jarrell on H.D.; Jarrell on Rukeyser; Vendler on Loy; etc. And I'm all for the persistence. Unlike the critical generation invoked above, Gilbert does not appear, for all his Word-Woman schema, to be a homophobe.* Greece is a lure, as Alexandria is for Durrell, because of Cavafy, the tradition of the poet of the cosmopolitan tribe, and the interest in entertainments, in the pornographic novel (as the historical novel was Riding/Graves' interest), is an effort to tune in rhetorically to cosmopolitan ranges of diction. Here's where I read the cunning; the effect of this novelistic positioning within language is to repudiate the professionalized mainstream in American poetry while promising to make the whole work worth reading, vide bad poems and all.
Let's be clear: focusing on how bad Gilbert frequently is does him no justice at all. We may know how crucially marriage tropes for Gilbert, so that in "Betrothed" "the middle of a life" "goes pure" in "perfect inhumanity" when a "black and white of me mated" in "this indifferent winter landscape" and so forth and so on and the thing unravels into its various tropes, the speaker's conviction in which gets to be naturalized all too readily. Whereas at his best Gilbert understands the clarity of perception to be an ineffable triangulation of resemblances, and "Relative Pitch" is an example of this. Three analogies are balanced very carefully: On his way back up the mountain (presumably in Greece) the speaker hears children "playing as though they were happy," and the speaker's uncertainty as to whether they actually could be happy is exposed by the "measure"'s similarity to a man the speaker has heard of in Virginia who took one of Fuller's geodesic domes and renovated it, despite knowing nothing of Fuller. All the renovator had of the prior experience of the house's residents was a chair, from which, Gilbert suggests, the renovator worked his way out to a consideration of the whole. And so these parts of the poem have become, for the speaker, "the religion" "whispered" of "upstairs in the dark, | sometimes in the parlor amid blazing sunlight, | and under trees with rain coming down | in August on the bare unaccustomed bodies." It's Gilbert's tendency to claim this set of resemblances as a sound, a note (on the analogy to music, as in Pound), here a "Relative Pitch," but I actually think the title, like the concept it describes, is only approximate to the perception the poem enacts, which is one of mysterious clarity in solitude.
With many people on this site, nevertheless, then, I would agree that this is Gilbert's best book.
* I wrote this based on the poetry, and on having met Gilbert several times during a brief period he lived in Iowa City in 1984. But as I should have known, these make a poor basis for such a remark, especially since Gilbert is a writer especially concerned to confound the work with "the poet," to essentialize the work as "the man." Subsequent reading turns up that when Gordon Lish asked Gilbert on July 18, 1962, who were the living American poets he read, Duncan and "once upon a time, Ginsberg," are among the named. Lish questions Gilbert further about the figures of whales, elephants, and Alcibiades, in the Views Of Jeopardy poem, Gilbert admits he likes the scale of the former two mammals, and says, of Alcibiades, "It's so much the problem today. It is so much our most endowed people who go wrong -- become corrupt, sexually distorted, criminal, mad. You might just as well call it Evil as it has been so often called to simplify things. But whatever the name, it is clear that Cordelia has little relevance for us except as a lost Eden. What concerns our time is Goneril. That's why insanity, homosexuality, and semi-criminality are so common among poets. These prevent him from escaping into the obliviousness of normal life. Especially in modern times, the poet has a built-in inability to succeed, so he is forced to associate with whales." Lish smartly answers back: "And you intend to continue to live with them by choice?" And Gilbert replies: "Well, I'm not crazy, queer, or crooked!"
What's going on, here, aside from the blandishment about "sexual distortion," which would gain total assent from John Crowe Ransom, is Gilbert playing at the Duncanian "drama of the psyche" as this works itself out in his letting King Lear read his world. He's poaching the "Jocasta" cultural analysis of Laura Riding, and making a mess of it. And letting his own sexual-cultural location "pass" as the unmarked one. It's a kind of minstrelsy he's not entirely aware he's playing. 12/06/12
June 29, 2022
JACK IS MY NEW FAVORITE POET!
December 12, 2009
Two of Jack Gilbert's poems, "Finding Something" and "Michiko Dead" appear in "The Poet's Companion" by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, as examples of how to use metaphor in writing poetry. These two poems impressed me so much that for a long time I wanted to read more of Gilbert's work, hence I was excited to find this collection.
Gilbert's use of language is surprising, direct, and reaches an astonishing depth. Sometimes the poems seem to wander a bit, making them difficult to understand which direction they are taking. This is more than made up for with his final lines, always bringing a sharp-pointed twist.
And then there is the occasional line that is absolutely stunning, especially in the poems that portray his grief at losing his wife Michiko. The sorrow and loneliness are palpable. Examples: "...where my heart is as helpless as crushed birds." (Finding Something); "The painful love of being permanently unhoused. Not color, but the stain." (How to Love the Dead). The second example is about Michiko's spirit after her death.
I chose four stars instead of five because of the way some of the poems wandered. The ones that were focused deserve more than five stars.
Gilbert's use of language is surprising, direct, and reaches an astonishing depth. Sometimes the poems seem to wander a bit, making them difficult to understand which direction they are taking. This is more than made up for with his final lines, always bringing a sharp-pointed twist.
And then there is the occasional line that is absolutely stunning, especially in the poems that portray his grief at losing his wife Michiko. The sorrow and loneliness are palpable. Examples: "...where my heart is as helpless as crushed birds." (Finding Something); "The painful love of being permanently unhoused. Not color, but the stain." (How to Love the Dead). The second example is about Michiko's spirit after her death.
I chose four stars instead of five because of the way some of the poems wandered. The ones that were focused deserve more than five stars.
February 14, 2022
"Not the river as fact, but the winter river,
and that river in June as two rivers.
We feel it run through our nature, the water
smelling of wet rotting just before spring,
and we call it love, a wilderness in the mind."
and that river in June as two rivers.
We feel it run through our nature, the water
smelling of wet rotting just before spring,
and we call it love, a wilderness in the mind."
June 6, 2010
I've only lately come to Gilbert's poetry. With each book, though, I'm increasingly appreciative of his quiet power. The poems in The Great Fires, even more so than others I've read, are about intense feeling. In that way they have an Asian sensibility about them, like the focused emotion of Japanese novels. Each of these poems examines such a mood or expressed feeling. Sadness seems to permeate them, and loss--Gilbert mentions several times Michiko, the young wife who died very young. Even the poem Gilbert writes about the 13-year old girl aware of her new breasts is tinged with sadness. He knows their taut wpring will one day lead her to the complex confusions of love and need. Gilbert himself says what we feel most has no name. So we're glad he has the verbal power to express what's inexpressible in ourselves. We're grateful, too, for his reassurance that our feelings, whether of love or sadness or some ineffable disquiet, speaks to the special heart of each of us.
June 20, 2007
I was out in the woods yesterday with some friends, and we were staring at some beautifully almost-symmetric rocks in a creek bed. We started talking about wabi-sabi, which reminded me of the poem "Ruins and Wabi" from this book. That poem reminded me of several other poems in this book, which reminded me that this book is unbearably awesome.
Four years after first reading it this is still my favorite book of poetry, hands down.
Four years after first reading it this is still my favorite book of poetry, hands down.
May 8, 2016
M I c h I k o. N o g a m I (1946-1982)
Is she more apparent because she is not
Anymore forever? Is her whiteness more white
Because she was the color of pale honey?
A smokestack making the sky more visible.
A dead woman filling the whole world. M I c h I k o
said, "The roses you gave me kept me awake
with the sound of their petals falling"
February 24, 2009
Glittering, unsparing work. Beautiful.
July 19, 2022
Det var några rader i romanen Fire Sermon som ledde mig till Jack Gilberts poesi. En ny favoritpoet, sida vid sida med Nina Cassian från tidigare i år. Det här är ett nedslag mitt i hans produktion. Först letar jag upp dikten Exceeding och de här raderna:
"We go into the orchard for apples. But what
we carry back is the day among trees with odor,
coolness, dappled light and time."
Får omedelbart två egna associationer. Litteratur ska fungera så:
1. En pågående utställning i Ealing med titeln Dappled Light. Håller på till september.
https://www.pitzhanger.org.uk/whatson...
2. Ett foto jag tog i Sissinghursts fruktträdgård. Det var september, tidigt under pandemin. Vi var alla permitterade en dag i veckan, för min del fredagar, och under en av dessa Furlough Friday-utfärder fann jag mig i eftermiddagsljuset i denna förtrollade orchard, men jag tänkte inte på döden och det var en befrielse. https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/87918...
Övriga dikter handlar mycket om de kvinnor Gilbert levde med, särskilt om sorgen efter Michiko, men en annan tillägnas Linda Gregg: "From this distance they are unimportant, standing by the sea. [...] the marriage is almost over". Det är inte svårtillgängligt, varje dikt är som en liten värld. Så här kan de inledas:
"The sultry first night of July, he in bed
reading one of Chandler's lesser novels.
[...] Rain makes a sound on the birches"
Lyssnade på någon podd och läste den här intervjun med stort nöje, t.ex. när han får frågan om han är den del av Beat-rörelsen svarar han "- God, no! And I don’t go in for freakish behavior nor esoteric knowledge." Lite senare i artikeln säger han något om ett "urban Walden" och det gör att jag kryssar i kategorin 'literary soulmates'.
https://unsaidmagazine.wordpress.com/...
Kuriosa: en stund senare noterade jag att just den här diktsamlingen även lästs av Stewart O'Nan och efter hans Last Night at The Lobster kryssade jag också i 'literary soulmates'.
"We go into the orchard for apples. But what
we carry back is the day among trees with odor,
coolness, dappled light and time."
Får omedelbart två egna associationer. Litteratur ska fungera så:
1. En pågående utställning i Ealing med titeln Dappled Light. Håller på till september.
https://www.pitzhanger.org.uk/whatson...
2. Ett foto jag tog i Sissinghursts fruktträdgård. Det var september, tidigt under pandemin. Vi var alla permitterade en dag i veckan, för min del fredagar, och under en av dessa Furlough Friday-utfärder fann jag mig i eftermiddagsljuset i denna förtrollade orchard, men jag tänkte inte på döden och det var en befrielse. https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/87918...
Övriga dikter handlar mycket om de kvinnor Gilbert levde med, särskilt om sorgen efter Michiko, men en annan tillägnas Linda Gregg: "From this distance they are unimportant, standing by the sea. [...] the marriage is almost over". Det är inte svårtillgängligt, varje dikt är som en liten värld. Så här kan de inledas:
"The sultry first night of July, he in bed
reading one of Chandler's lesser novels.
[...] Rain makes a sound on the birches"
Lyssnade på någon podd och läste den här intervjun med stort nöje, t.ex. när han får frågan om han är den del av Beat-rörelsen svarar han "- God, no! And I don’t go in for freakish behavior nor esoteric knowledge." Lite senare i artikeln säger han något om ett "urban Walden" och det gör att jag kryssar i kategorin 'literary soulmates'.
https://unsaidmagazine.wordpress.com/...
Kuriosa: en stund senare noterade jag att just den här diktsamlingen även lästs av Stewart O'Nan och efter hans Last Night at The Lobster kryssade jag också i 'literary soulmates'.
April 19, 2015
I admit to being a bit leery of critiquing poetry collections, having been one of those who until recently was very intimidated by poems and felt either inadequate to make sense of them or perplexed as to what made them worth putting down on paper in the first place.
But due to life circumstances, poetry has become a much more integral part of my experience. And I have figured a few things out, the primary one being that I can skim a poem and figure out from that superficial reading whether or not it resonates sufficiently with me to give it a closer look. If not, I don't bother, and I don't feel guilty about it. (Odd, isn't it, that reaction of shame, as if it is me who is inadequate and not the poem? I simply determined to get over it and, slowly, that's what happened).
This collection, subtitled Poems 1982-1992, is an excellent one to subject to this type of scrutiny. The majority of these poems, for better or for worse, fall into the category of not being worth going back and examining more closely. Of course, this is a personal reaction, but another thing I have learned about poetry in the past few years is that the personal is everything, really. Oh, I know, some poems are technically brilliant, but part of the reason poetry is largely a cottage industry these days rather than the vibrant form it deserves to be is, or so it seems to me, this claim to a sort of preciousness that places it out of the reach of the average reader. (If you want to read a brilliant treatise on this conundrum, I highly recommend David Orr's Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry).
But several of the poems in this collection deserve more than just a second glance, and reward repeated readings. I will give you only one example that spoke eloquently to me, though you may find different of them reach out to you. That is the magic and wonder of poetry. Don't worry about it. Dive in. Poetry can't hurt you, and you can't hurt it. And you are at all times in charge of your experience. Don't let yourself abandon something that can be so vibrant and alive just because Wordsworth is unreadable and your high school English teacher shoved him down your throat. Because out there waiting for us are poems like this one:
But due to life circumstances, poetry has become a much more integral part of my experience. And I have figured a few things out, the primary one being that I can skim a poem and figure out from that superficial reading whether or not it resonates sufficiently with me to give it a closer look. If not, I don't bother, and I don't feel guilty about it. (Odd, isn't it, that reaction of shame, as if it is me who is inadequate and not the poem? I simply determined to get over it and, slowly, that's what happened).
This collection, subtitled Poems 1982-1992, is an excellent one to subject to this type of scrutiny. The majority of these poems, for better or for worse, fall into the category of not being worth going back and examining more closely. Of course, this is a personal reaction, but another thing I have learned about poetry in the past few years is that the personal is everything, really. Oh, I know, some poems are technically brilliant, but part of the reason poetry is largely a cottage industry these days rather than the vibrant form it deserves to be is, or so it seems to me, this claim to a sort of preciousness that places it out of the reach of the average reader. (If you want to read a brilliant treatise on this conundrum, I highly recommend David Orr's Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry).
But several of the poems in this collection deserve more than just a second glance, and reward repeated readings. I will give you only one example that spoke eloquently to me, though you may find different of them reach out to you. That is the magic and wonder of poetry. Don't worry about it. Dive in. Poetry can't hurt you, and you can't hurt it. And you are at all times in charge of your experience. Don't let yourself abandon something that can be so vibrant and alive just because Wordsworth is unreadable and your high school English teacher shoved him down your throat. Because out there waiting for us are poems like this one:
Alone
I never thought Michiko would come back after she died. But if she did, I knew it would be as a lady in a long white dress. It is strange that she has returned as somebody's dalmatian. I meet the man walking her on a leash almost every week. He says good morning and I stoop down to calm her. He said once that she was never like that with other people. Sometimes she is tethered on their lawn when I go by. If nobody is around, I sit on the grass. When she finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap and we watch each other's eyes as I whisper in her soft ears. She cares nothing about the mystery. She likes it best when I touch her head and tell her small things about my days and our friends. That makes her happy the way it always did.
March 29, 2015
Spurred on by a glowing review (What is the best portrayal of a marriage in literature?), I turned back to Gilbert's The Great Fires and have been savoring this collection for weeks now.
In a word, every poem in this collection is piercing, most often conveying the searing ache of loss, and the ache of loss lost—the horror of discovering that the pain of the one great loss that has defined a period of his life is no longer so clear as it once was. ("I want to go back to that time after Michiko's death / when I cried every day among the trees. To the real, / To the magnitude of pain, of being that much alive.")
Gilbert manages to capture so much of life in this struggle: the machinery, the habit that allows us to carry on day to day, is at odds with the insight, the sense of present beauty, that even the deepest pain grants. Should we seek out passion, accompanying pain and the augmented insight they offer, or be contented with the quotidian? Often, I think Gilbert seeks, wishes for a return to the searing clarity of pain, yet in "Highlights and Interstices", one of my favorites, he seems to yearn for the daily life he missed with his lost wife ("the best is often when nothing is happening. / ... / Our lives happen between / the memorable. I have lost two thousand habitual / breakfasts with Michiko. What I miss most about / her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.")
Some of my favorites:
"The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" has long been a favorite of mine.
"Highlights and Interstices"
"Theoretical Lives" ("Using the feet, or shadows of feet, / and the exact diagrams of German professors, / learned men argue about what the arms / were doing and how good the sculpture was.")
"Playing House" ("Or is it insectal? / The sound of apparatus?")
"Harm and Boon in the Meetings" ("...and the wood / gives itself away to that intimacy, / the manner in which we and the world / meet each new day. Harm and boon / in the meetings... / ... / Grief makes the heart / apparent as much as sudden happiness can.")
"Gift Horses" ("...For the Devil is commissioned / to harm, to keelhaul us with loss, with knowledge / of how all things splendid are disfigured by small / and small. Yet he allows us to eat roast goat / on the mountain above Parakia. Lets us stumble / for the first time, unprepared, onto the buildings / of Palladio in the moonlight. Maybe because he is not / good at his job. I believe he loves us against / his will.")
In a word, every poem in this collection is piercing, most often conveying the searing ache of loss, and the ache of loss lost—the horror of discovering that the pain of the one great loss that has defined a period of his life is no longer so clear as it once was. ("I want to go back to that time after Michiko's death / when I cried every day among the trees. To the real, / To the magnitude of pain, of being that much alive.")
Gilbert manages to capture so much of life in this struggle: the machinery, the habit that allows us to carry on day to day, is at odds with the insight, the sense of present beauty, that even the deepest pain grants. Should we seek out passion, accompanying pain and the augmented insight they offer, or be contented with the quotidian? Often, I think Gilbert seeks, wishes for a return to the searing clarity of pain, yet in "Highlights and Interstices", one of my favorites, he seems to yearn for the daily life he missed with his lost wife ("the best is often when nothing is happening. / ... / Our lives happen between / the memorable. I have lost two thousand habitual / breakfasts with Michiko. What I miss most about / her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.")
Some of my favorites:
"The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" has long been a favorite of mine.
"Highlights and Interstices"
"Theoretical Lives" ("Using the feet, or shadows of feet, / and the exact diagrams of German professors, / learned men argue about what the arms / were doing and how good the sculpture was.")
"Playing House" ("Or is it insectal? / The sound of apparatus?")
"Harm and Boon in the Meetings" ("...and the wood / gives itself away to that intimacy, / the manner in which we and the world / meet each new day. Harm and boon / in the meetings... / ... / Grief makes the heart / apparent as much as sudden happiness can.")
"Gift Horses" ("...For the Devil is commissioned / to harm, to keelhaul us with loss, with knowledge / of how all things splendid are disfigured by small / and small. Yet he allows us to eat roast goat / on the mountain above Parakia. Lets us stumble / for the first time, unprepared, onto the buildings / of Palladio in the moonlight. Maybe because he is not / good at his job. I believe he loves us against / his will.")
November 28, 2009
On the surface, these poems might seem overly simple, perhaps even a tad mundane and at times weepy/maudlin. This is unassuming, earnest, tender, thoughtful stuff. Many of the poems ("Gift Horses," "I Imagine the Gods") are variations on the same theme: a mellow, older man singing the praises of raw fleshly experience, creaturely love, and lonely fumbling sex (in all its heartwrenching transience and unspoken desperation). Trying to find significance in little things, because significance is the closest thing to permanence that we mortals can attain. Gilbert is a bit like Robert Hass, but rather less ambitious and more personal, more achingly intimate.
"Michiko Dead" is one of the stand-out works in this collection: a highly original concept, presented simply. Rather than marring the poem by saying too much, the poet leaves it to the reader make the connection between the poem and its title, with moving results.
"In Umbria" is a perfect little poem, none-too-ambitious but rather like an epigram the ancient Greeks or Romans might have written.
My favorite poem in this collection, though, is "Trying to Have Something Left Over," with the too-real, too-painful yearning that simmers beneath its lines; I think it really encapsulates the climate of modern love (i.e., all these "meaningless" hook-ups, burdened as they are by expiration dates and the sense of doing something vaguely wrong).
"Michiko Dead" is one of the stand-out works in this collection: a highly original concept, presented simply. Rather than marring the poem by saying too much, the poet leaves it to the reader make the connection between the poem and its title, with moving results.
"In Umbria" is a perfect little poem, none-too-ambitious but rather like an epigram the ancient Greeks or Romans might have written.
My favorite poem in this collection, though, is "Trying to Have Something Left Over," with the too-real, too-painful yearning that simmers beneath its lines; I think it really encapsulates the climate of modern love (i.e., all these "meaningless" hook-ups, burdened as they are by expiration dates and the sense of doing something vaguely wrong).
January 11, 2010
I really really disliked most poetry I had read up until a friend sent me a poem by Jack Gilbert. I will include it here so you can fall in love too:
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.
March 9, 2017
Once again I'm at a loss for words when I try to write about poetry. I can't pretend I really know enough about the technical side of writing poetry, to write an informed review, and can merely give my personal opinion. Most of the time the poems felt too full. Not necessarily too long, but rather as if the writer couldn't quite get at the point he wanted to make, and just tried to throw more words on the page in an attempt to reach the centre of a feeling, and then left it like that. It never really works, it makes a poem messy and murky. However, some poems did hit centre and knocked me down because their imagery was so vivid, and concise, it transports you directly into the feeling it's supposed to have. An example of this is the poem called Michiko Dead, or Married. But I also really liked Ghosts, and Amost Happy. Sometimes, as the saying goes, less is more.
January 12, 2017
I wanted to read this book b/c it was one of Mike Rugnetta's favourites, and there is definitely something here, some kind of tenderness. The parts about his wife's death are interesting, but I'm afraid I've had enough of sad, stoic men living on mountains trying to sell me the simple life and lyricizing their sexual conquests. On top of that, he seems uncomfortably comfortable sexualizing young girls and uncritical of positive associations to whiteness. There were a couple other memorable poems, such as "Prospero Without His Magic," "Trying To Have Something Left Over," and "Theoretical Lives." Not a bad book, but not very touching or original.
July 2, 2020
I've developed a habit of simply listing my favorite poems of a book of poetry in the review column. Here, that would be nonsensical. The list would be a complete list of the collection's contents. Gilbert writes about his late wife Michiko and Pittsburgh. He often seduces a reader with other subjectsonly to have it revert to thoughts of his dead wife. My uncle said, "there's blood on every page." I occasionally am haunted by these poems' beauty and direction. They grant purpose and affirmation without always exhibiting strength.
December 19, 2021
“Love is one of many great fires.”
“Our lives happen between the memorable. I have lost two thousand habitual breakfasts with Michiko. What I miss most about her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.”
“Our lives happen between the memorable. I have lost two thousand habitual breakfasts with Michiko. What I miss most about her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.”
January 4, 2023
he is so insanely good at saying the right words to describe grief. i was in tears.
May 11, 2010
Vocabulary isn't Style, clever juxtaposition isn't Insight, vagueness of thought isn't Mystery. The rhythm was by turns confusing or non-existent. The stories were not engaging. The only way these poems could be saved is by being read aloud in an affected poet voice.
I was surprised at how much I didn't like this book, as I intended to like it and as much as I loved the opening poem "Going Wrong."
I put this book down a few times to clear my head. I thought it was me being too critical. But every time I picked it up, it did not improve. The second half was worst than the first--much too long of a book.
I just got the feeling of an old man still 'trying to be a poet' instead of simply commanding the page, singing in his own voice.
I was surprised at how much I didn't like this book, as I intended to like it and as much as I loved the opening poem "Going Wrong."
I put this book down a few times to clear my head. I thought it was me being too critical. But every time I picked it up, it did not improve. The second half was worst than the first--much too long of a book.
I just got the feeling of an old man still 'trying to be a poet' instead of simply commanding the page, singing in his own voice.
December 2, 2012
Jack Gilbert recently died. Andrew Sullivan posted a few of Gilbert's poems on his Dish blog, leading me to this book.
This probably isn't the most fair criticism, but the poems were so introspective, reading them felt like being bludgeoned with introspection. I can't really object to the fact that many of the poems hewed to themes of personal loss (Gilbert's dead wife Michiko is a widely-covered subject). Perhaps Gilbert has other poetry collections where he ventures outside himself, into the larger world, and addresses big themes rather than small-bore confessional topics. After a collection like this I want to pick up Paradise Lost, or listen to a few Beethoven symphonies, works that drop you into some kind of bottomless enormity.
This probably isn't the most fair criticism, but the poems were so introspective, reading them felt like being bludgeoned with introspection. I can't really object to the fact that many of the poems hewed to themes of personal loss (Gilbert's dead wife Michiko is a widely-covered subject). Perhaps Gilbert has other poetry collections where he ventures outside himself, into the larger world, and addresses big themes rather than small-bore confessional topics. After a collection like this I want to pick up Paradise Lost, or listen to a few Beethoven symphonies, works that drop you into some kind of bottomless enormity.
January 30, 2013
I did like some of the poems (Haunted Importantly, Betrothed, What is There to Say?, Michiko Dead, How to Love the Dead) but I hated a huge number of them. Hate is the wrong word - more that I found them distasteful or faux-wise or the cadence just felt off.
April 1, 2018
To be clear, it is only a poetry of patriarchs.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 161 reviews