Jack Gilbert
 

Reading the Paris Review article put me in mind to start this thread and see if there are any other fans in the Eratosphere.

Jack Gilbert has put out 4 books in roughly 40 years and is the sort of poet that, without coming across as confessional, often processes his life into poetry. In straight forward free verse, often with fairly regular accents a line, he has a tendency just to say what he means. This places a great strain on having something worth while to say, and gives a strong feeling of conviction in the poetry.

On the craft side I admire how much he wrings out of his images or metaphors. There usually aren't that many, and sometimes if they were over quickly the would be ordinary, but he takes time to see things from many directions.

Here are 1 example/book enjoy. If you're interested the Paris Review interview (see the general talk thread) is well worth a read too

The Abnormal is Not Courage

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossib1e, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.





They Call It Attempted Suicide"
Jack Gilbert

My brother's girlfriend was not prepared for how much blood
splashed out. He got home in time, but was angry
about the mess she had made of his room. I stood behind,
watching them turn into something manageable. Thinking
how frightening it must have been before things had names.
We say peony and make a flower out of that slow writhing.
Deal with the horror of recurrence by calling it
a million years. The death everywhere is no trouble
once you see it as nature, landscape, or botany.



Michiko Dead

BY JACK GILBERT

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

“So many of the words are for meanwhile”

is a Gilbert line that caught my attention just yesterday. It's from “The Butternut Tree at Fort Juniper” in Refusing Heaven.

Thanks for starting this thread -- it reminded me that I miss reading Gilbert. It's been a while. He has way of bringing things into focus and making the present present, I think in part through his patience with his own writing: "courage is not the abnormal. / Not the marvelous act."

I've been a fan since I stumbled on a book called Monolithos at a used book store in Denton, TX in the '90's. He was a Yale Younger Poet in '62, I believe, probably chosen by James Dickey, and Monolithos, which didn't come until 20 years later, collected some of the poems from Views of Jeopardy, his debut, along with new poems.

In his latest book, The Dance Most of All, there's a wonderful poem called The Spell Cast Over, which describes old men in "the Pittsburgh of my days" watching dancers in the old burlesque houses:

"The waning men longed to escape from the spell
cast over them by time. To escape the imprisoned
longing. To insist on dispensation. To see
their young hearts just one more time."

He's been writing in his unique inimitable style (though you can hear a very strong influence, I think, in the poems of Linda Gregg) for over four decades, and he hasn't lost it, even in his eighties.

Except for the hard to find and expensive Views of Jeopardy, I've got all his books. An original, and one of my favorites.

I like him much more than Linda Gregg, though the influence wouldn't be hard to account for since I believe that he and Linda Gregg were a couple for a few years until he met Michiko.

There's something about his style that reminds me of Amichai, though the personality and voice that come through each of them were very different. At any rate, the ability to speak so clearly and meticulously, but with unflagging emotion and insight coming through at every turn, is what they have in common.