GREAT FIRES: POEMS 1982-1992 PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Jack Gilbert | 112 pages | 13 Feb 1996 | Alfred A. Knopf | 9780679747673 | English | New York, United States The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert: | : Books

I mean, he was resentful that I was bedding his daughter without any official rights. On Christmas Day we went up on his mountain to find a tree that would suit Linda. We were walking along and he was behaving himself. We kept walking until we came to these trees. He was crazy about nature. Being the bad guy with his lovely daughter, I immediately took the rope and saw and started climbing. But not a forest. I was way up there. I thought I would tug on the treetop until it snapped, except in the middle of doing this there was a big gust of wind that snapped the thing, and it fell on me and was pushing me down. I was heroic about it, but my thighs gave way, and the rope too. I plummeted down, shearing off the branches. I was going so fast that the speed just butchered the tree. Luckily I landed on dirt. And when I was thirteen, we lived in a huge house on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. During the day, my mother and father went into town, leaving my siblings and me all alone in this magnificent house, three stories high and no one there but us. We played on the roof, in the laundry chutes. It was extraordinarily dangerous. It was lovely, legendary. We owned that little world. In the back of the house were two orchards, one filled with peaches, the other with apples. We were always in the apple trees—frequently falling down. Why not? I was kind of a strange boy to be in Pittsburgh. I spent so much time reading. Even if I started a book that was boring, it was almost impossible for me not to finish it. I had such curiosity. And you might not think it, but the power of Pittsburgh, the grandeur, those three great rivers, was magnificent. Even working in the steel mills. Giant converters hundreds of feet high. Every night, the sky looked enormous. It was a torrent of flames—of fire. The place that Pittsburgh used to be had such scale. My father never brought home three pounds of potatoes. He always came home with crates of things. Everything was grand, heroic. Everything seemed to be gigantic in Pittsburgh—the people, the history. Almost any book in the library— knights saving ladies, cowboys trying to kill the bad guy. I just devoured books; each new story opened a new vista. Link your subscription. His poem, "Tear It Down" often reminds me about the necessity of intention in marriage. Account Options Anmelden. Meine Mediathek Hilfe Erweiterte Buchsuche. The Great Fires : Poems, Jack Gilbert. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group , 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 Great Fires, Poems by Jack Gilbert |

Photograph by E. On the rare occasions when Jack Gilbert gives public readings—whether in New York, Pittsburgh, or San Francisco—it is not unusual for men and women in the audience to tell him how his poems have saved their lives. At these gatherings, one may also hear wild stories about Gilbert: he was a junkie, he was homeless, he was married numerous times. In reality, he has never been addicted to drugs, has been impoverished but never homeless, and was married only once. The fascination with Gilbert is a response, above all, to the power of his poetry, but it also reflects the mystique of a life lived utterly without regard for the conventions of literary fortune and fame. Gilbert was born in Pittsburgh in He failed out of high school and worked as an exterminator and door-to-door salesman before being admitted, thanks to a clerical error, to the University of Pittsburgh. There he met the poet Gerald Stern, his exact contemporary. Gilbert started writing poetry, he says, because Stern did. Although he continued to write, he did not publish again for almost twenty years. In Gilbert left the country with his companion, the poet Linda Gregg. They lived in Greece, on the islands of Paros and Santorini, and for a brief period in Denmark and England. Gilbert soon met and married Michiko Nogami, a sculptor twenty-one years younger than him. They settled in Japan and Gilbert taught at Rikkyo University until , when he was appointed chief lecturer on American literature for the U. State Department and he embarked with Nogami on a fifteen-country tour. That same year, Nogami died of cancer. She was thirty-six. Gilbert now lives a modest, solitary life in Northampton, where he rents a room in the home of a friend, Henry Lyman. It is a cedar-shingled house that looks out over a winding river and a vast meadow—an idyllic spot that Gilbert says brings him great comfort. This interview took place there in two sessions, in January and in July of this year. Gilbert, who is eighty, appeared frail—his hair white and windswept—but his eyes were startlingly bright. On both occasions, we had the same lunch that he and Lyman have almost every day: bruschetta with smoked salmon. When the subject turned back to his work, he admitted that he hopes his poems give people a sense of possibilities. You once said that you were the only person you knew who left Pittsburgh a true romantic—one who woke up happy, though aware of his mortality, every day. In those days that was how old you could live to be. But many of my ancestors lived to a hundred. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting. The poem in the collection that bears her name: Michiko Nogami Is she more apparent because she is not anymore forever? Follow Glynn. Glynn Young. Glynn Young lives in St. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends. Latest posts by Glynn Young see all. Great introduction to this beautiful poet. Trackbacks […] grants, and has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. 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 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. 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 , 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. 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. Mar 29, Sarah rated it it was amazing Shelves: booklist , poetry. Spurred on by a glowing review What is the best portrayal of a marriage in literature? In a word, every poem in this collection is piercing, most often conveying the searing ache of loss, and the ache of loss lostthe 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. 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. 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. Jun 19, Jenna rated it liked it Shelves: poetry-in-english. 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. 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. 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. Jan 10, Jamie Felton rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , poetry. 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 I really really disliked most poetry I had read up until a friend sent me a poem by Jack Gilbert. 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. May 09, Ryan rated it did not like it. 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 thought it was me being too critical. But every Vocabulary isn't Style, clever juxtaposition isn't Insight, vagueness of thought isn't Mystery. 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. Shelves: poetry. 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 Jack Gilbert recently died. 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. Jan 11, Lauren rated it liked it Shelves: recent. 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. Jun 19, Doug rated it it was amazing. 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. Apr 30, Mary rated it it was amazing Shelves: poetry. N o g a m I Is she more apparent because she is not Anymore forever? Is her whiteness more white Because she was the color of pale honey? M I c h I k o said, "The roses you gave me kept me awake with the sound of their petals falling". Jan 29, l. Hate is the wrong word - more that I found them distasteful or faux-wise or the cadence just felt off. Feb 24, Molly rated it really liked it Shelves: poetry. Glittering, unsparing work. Mar 31, Pedro Trevino rated it it was ok. To be clear, it is only a poetry of patriarchs. Jan 31, Jasmine rated it really liked it Shelves: poetry. It slowly dawned on me that I somehow went through far too many years of BFA poetry workshops without learning my lesson - I always assume poems are fictional. It's always uncomfortable when I realize someone's beautiful, earnest poems are actually grounded in their real life because then I know far too much about them and, like, we don't know each other well for us to get embarrassingly personal, dude. That dead wife? Real dead wife. Which, man. The absolute It slowly dawned on me that I somehow went through far too many years of BFA poetry workshops without learning my lesson - I always assume poems are fictional. The absolute precision of his language and his imagery. Like a bullet. Here's the issue though: when the work is so autobiographical, my issues with the narration become my problem with the poet. Jack Gilbert's writing is tender and naked and crystalline and powerfully in control. But the subject matter? I just don't feel up to reading about a middle-aged guy checking out a thirteen year old's tits, no matter how beautifully and poignantly he writes about it. I thought we went over this with Lolita. I love the imagery, the use of language. This is a collection centred around a man growing old and lonely, but unashamed, doing so with quiet dignity. There's something to that, even if I may not personally connect. At first, I wanted to say that I don't like how he writes about women, which is mostly true, but there are some heartbreaking poems about loss and love in this collection. Anyways, here's my favourite, the poem that I can't stop rereading: 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 all wrong. O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds. Aug 23, Poetry. Shaman rated it it was amazing Shelves: reads , poetry , mfa , favorites , thesis-list. There is a lot to say when it comes to this incredible collection. I have read it through twice now, and while I may come back to this review and add to it later for my own benefit, I am ready to take a crack at articulating why I enjoyed this collection so much. One of the most important piece of knowledge to have before going into the collection is a bit about Jack Gilbert's past and fame as a poet. Having been recognized early in his life for poetry, he was treated as a bit of a celebrity for There is a lot to say when it comes to this incredible collection. Having been recognized early in his life for poetry, he was treated as a bit of a celebrity for a long while. While a lot about his history is speculation or hearsay, it seems that this popular attention was taxing on the poet and he took some time away from it all in rural Greece with his wife Michiko who died young from disease or sickness. The majority of the poem in this collection are the aftermath of that death. With that context, the book opens up and makes a lot of the overlapping themes more clear. The duality in this book is so interesting: the self and god, the body and spirit, even the self before and after the death of his wife. There are also several poems that deal with all different kinds of guilt: guilt for remembering the time after his wife's passing fondly, guilt for not staying in the world of fame utilizing his "god given" talents, and other forms of guilt one might speculate one. These themes felt fresh and presented in an original, effective way. While there isn't any traditional formality to speak of, the use of line breaks, subtle alliteration and rhyme, and the use of sentence fragments with traditional punctuation are super useful. The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert | Penguin Random House Canada

Of the poet, Gregg once said, "All Jack ever wanted to know was that he was awake—that the trees in bloom were almond trees—and to walk down the road to get breakfast. He never cared if he was poor or had to sleep on a park bench. He was also in a significant long-term relationship with the poet Laura Ulewicz during the late fifties and early sixties in San Francisco. Ulewicz was a great influence on his early work, in fact much of his characteristic style for which he later became known came directly from her, and his first book was dedicated to her. Nogami died of cancer at the age of 36, in Gilbert wrote two erotic novels with Jean Maclean which were published by the short-lived Danish Olympia Press under the pseudonym Tor Kung: [14]. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Jack Gilbert disambiguation. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 14 November The Academy of American Poets. Retrieved The Atlantic. The New York Times. Categories : American male poets births Writers from Pittsburgh Writers from Northampton, Massachusetts University of Pittsburgh alumni deaths Literature educators San Francisco State University alumni 20th-century American poets 20th-century American male writers. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. This interview took place there in two sessions, in January and in July of this year. Gilbert, who is eighty, appeared frail—his hair white and windswept—but his eyes were startlingly bright. On both occasions, we had the same lunch that he and Lyman have almost every day: bruschetta with smoked salmon. When the subject turned back to his work, he admitted that he hopes his poems give people a sense of possibilities. You once said that you were the only person you knew who left Pittsburgh a true romantic—one who woke up happy, though aware of his mortality, every day. In those days that was how old you could live to be. But many of my ancestors lived to a hundred. I have this mechanism, this body, which has been so kind to me. I was supposed to die. I fell head down from ninety feet. I insisted because it was Christmas. If I was going to die, I wanted to die under the Christmas tree with Linda. Linda and I wanted to go to Europe, so I had them build something that was like an exoskeleton. After saying goodbye to the doctors, I walked toward the door with Linda and when I got halfway there the doctor in charge said, Oh, one thing. If you feel a little bit of tingling in your fingers, that will mean that the paralysis has started. That never happened. Showing off. I mean, he was resentful that I was bedding his daughter without any official rights. On Christmas Day we went up on his mountain to find a tree that would suit Linda. We were walking along and he was behaving himself. We kept walking until we came to these trees. He was crazy about nature. Being the bad guy with his lovely daughter, I immediately took the rope and saw and started climbing. But not a forest. I was way up there. I thought I would tug on the treetop until it snapped, except in the middle of doing this there was a big gust of wind that snapped the thing, and it fell on me and was pushing me down. I was heroic about it, but my thighs gave way, and the rope too. I plummeted down, shearing off the branches. I was going so fast that the speed just butchered the tree. Luckily I landed on dirt. And when I was thirteen, we lived in a huge house on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. During the day, my mother and father went into town, leaving my siblings and me all alone in this magnificent house, three stories high and no one there but us. We played on the roof, in the laundry chutes. It was extraordinarily dangerous. It was lovely, legendary. We owned that little world. In the back of the house were two orchards, one filled with peaches, the other with apples. We were always in the apple trees—frequently falling down. Why not?

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Also by Jack Gilbert. Product Details. Inspired by Your Browsing History. The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Theodore Roethke. The Collected Poems of W. Strike Sparks. Tears for Water. Good Poems, American Places. Beautiful Country. Robert Wrigley. The American Night. Jim Morrison. A Walk with Tom Jefferson. Philip Levine. Shake Loose My Skin. Sonia Sanchez. Complete Poems. Dorothy Parker. The Sea at Truro. Nancy Willard. The Folding Cliffs. Jack Gilbert's God refuses to be so silent. Sometimes He is as voluble as the God of the Psalms. In "Going Wrong," the first poem in "The Great Fires," a man alone fixing his dinner has thought idly of the fish he is cleaning as "soft machinery of the dark. The Lord accuses the man of vanity and stubbornness for being alone, for choosing a hard and rocky life and landscape. The man keeps frying his dinner in the hot olive oil, adding lemon and peppers and tomatoes. He's a careful, attentive cook. Not stubborn, just greedy. If he's going to sin, it's going to be his sin, not God's. God can name the "machinery. This inaugural poem -- modest, even funny in its stoicism -- signals the central preoccupation and much of the poignancy of this collection of mostly brief, pristine lyrics from to The death of the poet's wife is the occasion for many of the poems, or is the occasion for much of the isolation that informs the retrospective voice. In this book of passions recounted over a lifetime of loves and romantic upheavals, even death is not simply loss but an opportunity for "the real. To the real. And in "Tear It Down," desire must be an absolute insistence "while there is still time. Together, they are the spirit. This is a book of farewells and leave-takings, yet it conveys a rare serenity, or a stoicism so fully achieved it passes for serenity. Gilbert's enormous relish for the physical world and his immaculate diction are about nothing less than "searching for a base line of the Lord. All the desires of a life -- especially sexual love, but also the passion for solitude, for poetry itself, for the accuracy of broken vignettes of memory -- are understood at last as a single great hunger: "I tried to gnaw my way into the Lord. The book's most powerful poems are not, however, the elegies, but the ones that accept ruined landscapes -- of Pittsburgh or Greece, or of marriages failed or failing -- and that begin to find new life there, free of nostalgia but born of the past's deep roots. Skip to Main Content. Content Top Issue Winter

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