grasonpoling's review against another edition
5.0
“... Everything itself.
The sea is water. Stones are made of rock.
The sun goes up and comes down. A success
without any enhancement whatsoever.”
Really could just keep re-reading Jack Gilbert. I worked through this collection backwards by section, reading his most experienced works before those he wrote when still young. What a wonderful development! Fragments of his most robust and inspiring thoughts from the later pieces were present in his first.
If I had to suggest one or two Jack Gilbert books - The Dance Most of All and The Great Fires (Honorable mention - Refusing Heaven).
The sea is water. Stones are made of rock.
The sun goes up and comes down. A success
without any enhancement whatsoever.”
Really could just keep re-reading Jack Gilbert. I worked through this collection backwards by section, reading his most experienced works before those he wrote when still young. What a wonderful development! Fragments of his most robust and inspiring thoughts from the later pieces were present in his first.
If I had to suggest one or two Jack Gilbert books - The Dance Most of All and The Great Fires (Honorable mention - Refusing Heaven).
mjessie's review against another edition
4.0
Very much enjoyed my foray into the poetics of lentils and nipples.
kathrat's review against another edition
2.0
I really tried. I’m sure this is wonderful if poetry is your thing, but I just don’t get it. It feels like a different language. Glad I read it though.
kevingentilcore's review against another edition
3.0
I can count on one hand the amount of poetry books I've read in my life and most of those have been friend's books. Poetry has never really been my bag. I do enjoy a good poem, or a clever turn of phrase, or a unique way of using words but when I go to read something new there's never a voice that says "hey, fucko, read some poetry."
I actually found Jack Gilbert because of Elizabeth Gilbert talking about him in her book "Big Magic." There's a story as to how she found him but when she discusses his history she talks about, enthusiastically, how Jack worked in solitude, came back and dropped these massive poems to great critical applause, shunned the spotlight, then peaced out again back to wherever and took years to work on his poems, then repeated the cycle all over again. He did this for decades before eventually he died in 2012. The concept of somebody just doing what they love, when they want, on their own terms and away from public praise (if one gets there) is like sweet, rich, comfort food for my soul so I was curious as to what kind of poetry was written this way, tracked down this massive tome of all his works and dug in.
I'll admit, I'm not entirely one to dissect, or even critique the work of poets, or do I know if these poems are constructed well or any of that. I rarely read one in this book that I felt I truly understood and a lot of them I thought amounted to almost gibberish. Yet, I enjoyed them all. I think it was the wordplay and the way the words flowed to the next and how they were structured like flowing water. Most of them made me feel sad, and there were some that were fairly grotesque, which I was drawn to, but overall I enjoyed the experience of just letting the words float by and interact with each other, regardless of meaning.
I actually found Jack Gilbert because of Elizabeth Gilbert talking about him in her book "Big Magic." There's a story as to how she found him but when she discusses his history she talks about, enthusiastically, how Jack worked in solitude, came back and dropped these massive poems to great critical applause, shunned the spotlight, then peaced out again back to wherever and took years to work on his poems, then repeated the cycle all over again. He did this for decades before eventually he died in 2012. The concept of somebody just doing what they love, when they want, on their own terms and away from public praise (if one gets there) is like sweet, rich, comfort food for my soul so I was curious as to what kind of poetry was written this way, tracked down this massive tome of all his works and dug in.
I'll admit, I'm not entirely one to dissect, or even critique the work of poets, or do I know if these poems are constructed well or any of that. I rarely read one in this book that I felt I truly understood and a lot of them I thought amounted to almost gibberish. Yet, I enjoyed them all. I think it was the wordplay and the way the words flowed to the next and how they were structured like flowing water. Most of them made me feel sad, and there were some that were fairly grotesque, which I was drawn to, but overall I enjoyed the experience of just letting the words float by and interact with each other, regardless of meaning.
williamsdebbied's review against another edition
5.0
Though I'm not generally a reader of poetry, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and I noted many, many poems that I will come back to again to reread and savor.
This collection spans fifty years of Gilbert's work. He writes about love and loss, success and failure, aging and death. His poems are lyrical and complex, firmly grounded in the sensory details of the places he lived and loved.
POETRY IS A KIND OF LYING
Poetry is a kind of lying,
necessarily. To profit the poet
or beauty. But also in
that truth may be told only so.
Those who, admirably, refuse
to falsify (as those who will not
risk pretensions) are excluded
From saying even so much.
Degas said he didn't paint
what he saw, but what
would enable them to see
the thing he had.
HIGHLIGHTS AND INTERSTICES
We think of lifetimes as mostly the exceptional
and sorrows. Marriage we remember as the children,
vacations, and emergencies. The uncommon parts.
But the best is often when nothing is happening.
The way a mother picks up the child almost without
noticing and carries her across Waller Street
while talking with the other woman. What if she
could keep all of that? 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.
Excerpt from A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.
BURMA
Used, misled, cheated. Our time always shortening.
What we cherish always temporary. What we love
is, sooner or later, changed. But for a while we can visit our other life. Can rejoice in its being there
in its absence. Giving thanks for what we are allowed
to think about it, grateful for it even as it wanes.
For knowing it is there. The way women on rainy days
sometimes go into the bedroom to cry about losing the first man they loved. The way a man remembers the young
woman at an upstairs window looking out he saw once,
for a moment, as he drove through a sleeping village.
Or the brightness in the memory of the failed hotel
where the waiters in their immaculate white uniforms
were barefoot. The elegant dining room silent except for
the sound of rain falling in the tin buckets. And
the whispering of giant overhead fans with broken
blades as they turned in the heat. There was the scraping
sound in the piles of dead leaves on the lavish veranda.
And occasionally the bright sound of broken glass.
All of it a blessing. The being there. Being alive then.
Like a giant bell ringing long after you can't hear it.
This collection spans fifty years of Gilbert's work. He writes about love and loss, success and failure, aging and death. His poems are lyrical and complex, firmly grounded in the sensory details of the places he lived and loved.
POETRY IS A KIND OF LYING
Poetry is a kind of lying,
necessarily. To profit the poet
or beauty. But also in
that truth may be told only so.
Those who, admirably, refuse
to falsify (as those who will not
risk pretensions) are excluded
From saying even so much.
Degas said he didn't paint
what he saw, but what
would enable them to see
the thing he had.
HIGHLIGHTS AND INTERSTICES
We think of lifetimes as mostly the exceptional
and sorrows. Marriage we remember as the children,
vacations, and emergencies. The uncommon parts.
But the best is often when nothing is happening.
The way a mother picks up the child almost without
noticing and carries her across Waller Street
while talking with the other woman. What if she
could keep all of that? 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.
Excerpt from A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.
BURMA
Used, misled, cheated. Our time always shortening.
What we cherish always temporary. What we love
is, sooner or later, changed. But for a while we can visit our other life. Can rejoice in its being there
in its absence. Giving thanks for what we are allowed
to think about it, grateful for it even as it wanes.
For knowing it is there. The way women on rainy days
sometimes go into the bedroom to cry about losing the first man they loved. The way a man remembers the young
woman at an upstairs window looking out he saw once,
for a moment, as he drove through a sleeping village.
Or the brightness in the memory of the failed hotel
where the waiters in their immaculate white uniforms
were barefoot. The elegant dining room silent except for
the sound of rain falling in the tin buckets. And
the whispering of giant overhead fans with broken
blades as they turned in the heat. There was the scraping
sound in the piles of dead leaves on the lavish veranda.
And occasionally the bright sound of broken glass.
All of it a blessing. The being there. Being alive then.
Like a giant bell ringing long after you can't hear it.
juliechristinejohnson's review
5.0
Although no relation, writer Elizabeth Gilbert has been singing poet Jack Gilbert's praises while on the tour circuit to promote her new book, Big Magic. Gilbert-she deems Gilbert-he the "poet laureate of her life".
Jack Gilbert died in 2012 at the age of 87, and I wonder what he would make of his new-found fame; he, so determined to live a life apart, under the radar, untouched by ambition.
This one of the last poems I read in Collected Poems and it joins a host of others I have tagged, for it speaks of my soul. My imperfect heart which prefers this distance from people. Prefers the half-meetings which cannot lead to intimacy. The introvert who is often disappointed by intimacy . . . a taste for solitude. A poet who knows my heart.
Yet, deep bonds are possible, though few and far between. Jack Gilbert writes often of his second wife, Michiko, who died of cancer when she was just 36 and they'd had barely ten years together. That singular devotion ripples through much of his work, which is quiet, reflective and unironically, unabashedly poetic.
Gilbert's poetry speaks often of place. His hometown, Pittsburgh, and his later years in New England, are grounded in American sensibility and industry. Yet, he wandered for years in Europe, living in Greece and Italy, as well as a span of time in Japan, and the sensuality of these cultures—the textures of food and sea, of hillsides and heat—shimmers in his work.
The poet writes of things that poets write of: grief, sex, despair, God, autumn leaves, seafood, snow. His language is is beautiful and clear, a clarion of profound emotion expressed like a stream of the clearest water.
He is a romantic
but always clear-eyed, always aware of the paradoxes in life, the ever-present shadow of suffering, chased back by the bright, white light of the wonder of being alive. I treasure this collection for the many ways he enters a thought, a theme, through the simplest of objects and precision of language. His poems are short- most a page or less-drops of water beading on skin. He allows for quiet observation, for simplicity that resonates.
This collection contains Gilbert's most famous poem, A Brief for the Defense, which makes me think of so much of his poetic contemporary, and another favorite of mine, Richard Hugo. Men born between world wars, coming of age in the beatnik years, their voices that shaped by the contours of land, isolation, sadness and freedom that no longer exists in this hyper-connected world.
A Brief For The Defense
Jack Gilbert died in 2012 at the age of 87, and I wonder what he would make of his new-found fame; he, so determined to live a life apart, under the radar, untouched by ambition.
I call it exile, or being relegated.~Spring
I call it the provinces.
And all the time it is my heart.
My imperfect heart which prefers
this distance from people. Prefers
the half-meetings which cannot lead
to intimacy. Provisional friendships
that are interrupted near the beginning.
A pleasure in not communicating.
And inside, no despair or longing.
A taste for solitude. The knowledge
that love preserves freedom in always
failing. An exile by nature. Where,
indeed, would I ever be a citizen?
This one of the last poems I read in Collected Poems and it joins a host of others I have tagged, for it speaks of my soul. My imperfect heart which prefers this distance from people. Prefers the half-meetings which cannot lead to intimacy. The introvert who is often disappointed by intimacy . . . a taste for solitude. A poet who knows my heart.
Yet, deep bonds are possible, though few and far between. Jack Gilbert writes often of his second wife, Michiko, who died of cancer when she was just 36 and they'd had barely ten years together. That singular devotion ripples through much of his work, which is quiet, reflective and unironically, unabashedly poetic.
People complain about too many moons in my poetry
Gilbert's poetry speaks often of place. His hometown, Pittsburgh, and his later years in New England, are grounded in American sensibility and industry. Yet, he wandered for years in Europe, living in Greece and Italy, as well as a span of time in Japan, and the sensuality of these cultures—the textures of food and sea, of hillsides and heat—shimmers in his work.
But it is the morningsCucumbers and longing. The busy-ness of life that causes us to miss the pleasures of cucumbers and the solace of night.
that are hard to relinquish, and music
and cucumbers. Rain on trees, empty
piazzas in small towns flooded with sun.
What we are busy with doesn’t make us
groan ah! ah! as we will for the nights
and the cucumbers.
The poet writes of things that poets write of: grief, sex, despair, God, autumn leaves, seafood, snow. His language is is beautiful and clear, a clarion of profound emotion expressed like a stream of the clearest water.
There was the scraping
sound in the piles of dead leaves on the lavish veranda.
And occasionally the bright sounds of broken glass.
All of it a blessing. The being there. Being alive then.
Like a giant bell ringing long after you can't hear it.
He is a romantic
The arches of her feet are like voices~Finding Something
of children calling in the grove of lemon trees,
where my heart is as helpless as crushed birds.
but always clear-eyed, always aware of the paradoxes in life, the ever-present shadow of suffering, chased back by the bright, white light of the wonder of being alive. I treasure this collection for the many ways he enters a thought, a theme, through the simplest of objects and precision of language. His poems are short- most a page or less-drops of water beading on skin. He allows for quiet observation, for simplicity that resonates.
This collection contains Gilbert's most famous poem, A Brief for the Defense, which makes me think of so much of his poetic contemporary, and another favorite of mine, Richard Hugo. Men born between world wars, coming of age in the beatnik years, their voices that shaped by the contours of land, isolation, sadness and freedom that no longer exists in this hyper-connected world.
A Brief For The Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.