Views of Jeopardy

Yale Series of Younger Poets

by Jack Gilbert

First edition (second printing). left front cover with some slight miscolorations/marks, very slight, and wear to rear cover, particularly to Gilbert's youthful and handsome photo. Original price crossed out in pen.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Born 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.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this was Gilbert's first published book of poems. They are much more academic and, therefore, much less great than his later work. These poems, like so many professors of poems, are brimming with allusions, greek and otherwise. Many of the poems focus on Orpheus, a fella from Greek Mythology, who invented the lyre and with song could tame wild beasts and convince every woman in the room to disrobe. Anyway, these poems feel more labored than the poems that come later about his wife dying and about living by himself in the woods. There is still great stuff here; the poems were written, after all, by Jack Gilbert.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites: "And She Waiting," "Rain," "Abnormal Is Not Courage," "County Musician," and "On Growing Old in San Francisco"

[Haines Eason · Rating 4 out of 5]

As heavenly a collection as it is, it is, at times, odd (“whales”?). Still, Gilbert with this slim volume rekindles my love of all things Modern—I would imagine this collection is a bridge between Modern- and Postmodernism, with the speaker having one foot firmly planted in the latter. Such poise and vision.

[Milford Public Library Library · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Jack Gilbert won the Yale Younger Poets prize in 1962 for Views of Jeopardy, he attained a kind of allure usually foreign to poets.

Gilbert's 1st volume was part of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, designed to provide a publishing medium for the first volumes of promising poets, and was open to poets under 40 who'd not previously had a book of verse published.

Gilbert's 50 yr career yielded only a scant half dozen volumes of verse, but this was his first.
Though acquainted with some of the prominent members of the Beat movement (e.g. Jack Spicer & Allen Ginsberg) Gilbert himself is not considered a Beat poet. He is self described as a "serious romantic."

[Roman Leao · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading and loving Gilbert’s 2005 collection, Refusing Heaven, I decided to take a deep dive into his work. I fear, I may have gone too deep. Gilbert first book of poems, published in 1962, shows little of the humanity and immediacy of his later work, tempered by life and, unfortunately, grief. This early stuff shows the pedantic trends of Greek allusion and deliberate obtuseness that turn people off to poetry, squeezing out any relatable context and placing it firmly in the rarified air of academia.

[Keifer May · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of heartache and some joy and humor in these poems. You can tell they are written by a student of poetry, classics, and philosophy as Gilbert wove in his influences and the names of his lineage. Not my favorite read, but some of these poems gripped me. I could see this really growing on me with another reading.

[Caroline Gerardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Return to a book on my shelves. Not a rerun, spell check, return. Memorise a few for the sounds of bird calls and the way fog straightens my hair, yes spellcheck not frizzes. Not so certain the poems were as fabulous as I recall reading in another life. Wait wait one I marked with a pressed sweat pea now dull but the stain of the pink blood points to Orpheus

[Keely · Rating 4 out of 5]

Courage is…

The beauty that is of many days. Study and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

[w.ii]

amazing how a poet writes a few early poems and then discover they have much more to say.

[Candace Haskell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather dated in its use of once-commonly agreed upon metaphors from antiquity. I've noticed this in the juvenilia of poets starting out in the '60's - heavy reliance on Greek references - which nowadays are not a common cultural language, even for the well-educated. But I know Gilbert improves with age and I am working my way through his collected works to experience the breadth of his work. I expect to be richly reward a few decades forward.

[Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though Jack Gilbert is by far my favorite poet, I wasn't as excited by this collection as I thought I would be. I saw glimpses in these poems of what I loved in him in his later works, but there were many moments which got in the way and I felt the momentum drop. Still, the majority of the works are emotional on a level that few other poets manage (for me) to elicit, so four stars.

[Robb Todd]

“Don Giovanni On His Way to Hell (II)” is a masterpiece. As good as anything ever written. (You have to hate it now, right? I built it up to much.)

(Read as part of his collected works.)