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The Dance Most of All: Poems
A remarkable late-in-life collection, elegiac and bracing, from master poet Jack Gilbert, whose Refusing Heaven captivated the poetry world and won the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
In these characteristically bold and nuanced poems, Gilbert looks back at the passions of a life—the women, and his memories of all the stages of love; the places (Paris, Greece, Pittsburgh); the mysterious and lonely offices of poetry itself. We get illuminating glimpses of the poet’s background and childhood, in poems like “Going Home” (his mother the daughter of sharecroppers, his father the black sheep in a family of rich Virginia merchants) and “Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina,” a classic scene of pulling water from the well, sounding the depths.
The title of the collection is drawn from the startling “Ovid in Tears,” in which the poet figure has fallen and is carried out, muttering “White stone in the white sunlight . . . Both the melody / and the symphony. The imperfect dancing / in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.” Gilbert reminds us that there is beauty to be celebrated in the imperfect—“a worth / to the unshapely our sweet mind founders on”—and at the same time there is “the harrowing by mortality.” Yet, without fail, he embraces the state of grief and loss as part of the dance.
The culmination of a career spanning more than half a century of American poetry, The Dance Most of All is a book to celebrate and to read again and again.
In these characteristically bold and nuanced poems, Gilbert looks back at the passions of a life—the women, and his memories of all the stages of love; the places (Paris, Greece, Pittsburgh); the mysterious and lonely offices of poetry itself. We get illuminating glimpses of the poet’s background and childhood, in poems like “Going Home” (his mother the daughter of sharecroppers, his father the black sheep in a family of rich Virginia merchants) and “Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina,” a classic scene of pulling water from the well, sounding the depths.
The title of the collection is drawn from the startling “Ovid in Tears,” in which the poet figure has fallen and is carried out, muttering “White stone in the white sunlight . . . Both the melody / and the symphony. The imperfect dancing / in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.” Gilbert reminds us that there is beauty to be celebrated in the imperfect—“a worth / to the unshapely our sweet mind founders on”—and at the same time there is “the harrowing by mortality.” Yet, without fail, he embraces the state of grief and loss as part of the dance.
The culmination of a career spanning more than half a century of American poetry, The Dance Most of All is a book to celebrate and to read again and again.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Hardcover
First published April 7, 2009
25 people are currently reading
522 people want to read
About the author
Jack Gilbert
28 books308 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 49 reviews
March 8, 2010
The poems here, in Gilbert's most recent volume, are, as his poems always are, deeply personal. Using atmosphere and memory and contemplation to remember the localities and people who've mattered to him, he doggedly maintains his elegiac witness to the life he's lived and those in it with him. They are poems of loneliness at the end of a long life. At the same time, even while reading a poem like "Elegy," which is about a woman he still longs for, the reader is always aware these poems are marked and smoothed by an intrinsic dignity. I came to Gilbert late, only a few months ago. But I'm glad I did. His poetry makes my hair stand on end.
July 29, 2009
This collection, his latest and possibly his last, is my first exposure to the poetry of Jack Gilbert. I am struck by his fascination with women (or rather with his experience of them), by his nostalgia for his earlier life, and by the "idiocentric" nature of his work. The works seem more of a recollection and a savoring of memorable experiences than a reexamination and reinterpretation of them from the end-of-life perspective. While the latter course would give the idiocentric poems some universal value, the former tactic makes them a bit too egocentric. Many of the poems seem like short stories struggling to get out, while others (mostly the shorter ones) hint at a spark of the poetic spirit that must be more fully apparent in his earlier work (to judge by reports). "Getting It Right" is one I particularly liked: "Lying in front of the house all/afternoon, trying to write a poem./Falling asleep./Waking up under the stars."
February 15, 2022
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/1449828...
Jack Gilbert has a new book of poems and I must say I am pleasantly surprised by them. I figured he was doing more retread than original art, but he isn't. Mr. Gilbert is a very gifted poet with a brilliant ear. Although his poems are narrative, there also exists a dynamic song within them. Gilbert has never been afraid to deal with his emotions. He has had at least three deep and loving relationships. His most famous one was with a Japanese woman who died of cancer. He remains friends with Linda Gregg who he was romantically involved with before his greatest love, Michiko Nogami. The interesting story about Jack Gilbert is that he was discovered by Gordon Lish in California while Lish was cavorting with the likes of Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady. The remarkable literary magazine Genesis West was being edited by Gordon Lish and Gilbert found his way into the pages of that great rag.
If there ever was a collectible litmag available still at a reasonable price, this is it. In this particular volume of Genesis West, Lish includes poems of Jack Gilbert, an interview, and a celebration by other luminaries for the poetic genius already recognized by his peers. The year of publication was 1962 when Gilbert was thirty-eight years old, and just after he had won the Yale Young Poets Award with his first volume, Views of Jeopardy. Shortly thereafter Gilbert would leave for Greece, not to return for twenty years until Lish published his second volume of poems titled Monolithos: Poems, 1962 and 1982.
Gordon Lish has been getting quite a bit of press lately, mostly negative, for his editing and shaping of the work of Raymond Carver. Lish is an acquired taste, but one you must continually have once you get the hang of him. He is noted for teaching fiction writing for over thirty years, being an editor at Knopf for over twenty, and in the seventies being the editor of Esquire who brought the likes of Carver and Truman Capote to the national stage.
Jack Gilbert has a new book of poems and I must say I am pleasantly surprised by them. I figured he was doing more retread than original art, but he isn't. Mr. Gilbert is a very gifted poet with a brilliant ear. Although his poems are narrative, there also exists a dynamic song within them. Gilbert has never been afraid to deal with his emotions. He has had at least three deep and loving relationships. His most famous one was with a Japanese woman who died of cancer. He remains friends with Linda Gregg who he was romantically involved with before his greatest love, Michiko Nogami. The interesting story about Jack Gilbert is that he was discovered by Gordon Lish in California while Lish was cavorting with the likes of Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady. The remarkable literary magazine Genesis West was being edited by Gordon Lish and Gilbert found his way into the pages of that great rag.
If there ever was a collectible litmag available still at a reasonable price, this is it. In this particular volume of Genesis West, Lish includes poems of Jack Gilbert, an interview, and a celebration by other luminaries for the poetic genius already recognized by his peers. The year of publication was 1962 when Gilbert was thirty-eight years old, and just after he had won the Yale Young Poets Award with his first volume, Views of Jeopardy. Shortly thereafter Gilbert would leave for Greece, not to return for twenty years until Lish published his second volume of poems titled Monolithos: Poems, 1962 and 1982.
Gordon Lish has been getting quite a bit of press lately, mostly negative, for his editing and shaping of the work of Raymond Carver. Lish is an acquired taste, but one you must continually have once you get the hang of him. He is noted for teaching fiction writing for over thirty years, being an editor at Knopf for over twenty, and in the seventies being the editor of Esquire who brought the likes of Carver and Truman Capote to the national stage.
June 20, 2017
Wonderful, melancholy, puzzling. Still want him to live forever.
November 3, 2021
meh poetry with a hint of misogyny
“the truth is, goddesses are lousy in bed.” please shut up! 😁
“the truth is, goddesses are lousy in bed.” please shut up! 😁
August 14, 2020
Rich, lovely, dark, lyrical. Jack Gilbert's collection explores the power of memory, the relationships between men and women, death, solitude, and art. His poems will leave you thinking. Some are abstract, impressionistic; others, more straightforward narratives. As a Southern European, I greatly enjoyed Gilbert's poems about Italy and Greece; he captures the magic of these countries and made me relive my own memories. He has the ability to make anything lyrical, and in a way that is not overly sentimental.
The strongest poems in the collection are in the beginning, but I easily forgive Gilbert. The power of poems like "Ovid in Tears," "Alyosha," "South," "Waiting and Finding," and "Winter Happiness in Greece," are highly memorable. There is a vastness in Gilbert's verse that is rarely experienced in the world of contemporary poetry.
The strongest poems in the collection are in the beginning, but I easily forgive Gilbert. The power of poems like "Ovid in Tears," "Alyosha," "South," "Waiting and Finding," and "Winter Happiness in Greece," are highly memorable. There is a vastness in Gilbert's verse that is rarely experienced in the world of contemporary poetry.
May 29, 2013
Read this book all in one sitting, this morning, and I am pretty much ready to start again at page one. I love Jack Gilbert--though sometimes his scorn of the domestic gets me down, reading his poems makes me feel as if he sees right into the deepest part of the heart (mine) and then translates it, making me less alone in the world.
September 22, 2010
Not my favorite of Gilbert's books, but there is an elegance borne of age in this volume. On the one hand, I feel like he writes the same old familiar poem in this book, over and over, but on the other hand...I like that poem.
May 17, 2013
Gilbert is sitting right next to you reading these. You'll have to ask him to repeat the reading, because the syntax was so beautiful the first time, you missed the meaning. So you get two treats.
July 24, 2014
I had not read Gilbert previously. Needless to say I will seek out his other books now. His poems of longing and reflection just about undid me.
March 20, 2025
I was getting water tonight
off guard when I saw the moon
in my bucket and was tempted
by those Chinese poets
and their immaculate pain.
-- "Winter in the Night Fields"
"White stone in the white sunlight," he said
as they picked him up. "Not the great fires
built on the edge of the world." His voice grew
fainter as they carried him away. "Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all."
-- "Ovid in Tears"
When the Chinese made
a circle of stones on the top of their wells,
one would be a little skewed to make the circle
look more round. Irregularity is the secret
of music and to the voice of great poetry.
When a man remembers the beauty of his lost love,
it is the imperfect bit of her he remembers most.
The blown-up Parthenon is augmented by its damage.
-- "The Secret"
Best
of all are the gardens: hidden places where they have
burned down the buildings and kept the soil
poor so the plants won't grow with vulgar abundance.
Like the Japanese gardens made only of rocks and sand
so their beauty would not be obscured by appearances.
Like the maharaja who set aside the best courtyards
in his palace for the dandelions he imported from
England to be kept alive by the finest gardeners
in the world who knew how to work against nature.
-- "The Difficult Beauty"
off guard when I saw the moon
in my bucket and was tempted
by those Chinese poets
and their immaculate pain.
-- "Winter in the Night Fields"
"White stone in the white sunlight," he said
as they picked him up. "Not the great fires
built on the edge of the world." His voice grew
fainter as they carried him away. "Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all."
-- "Ovid in Tears"
When the Chinese made
a circle of stones on the top of their wells,
one would be a little skewed to make the circle
look more round. Irregularity is the secret
of music and to the voice of great poetry.
When a man remembers the beauty of his lost love,
it is the imperfect bit of her he remembers most.
The blown-up Parthenon is augmented by its damage.
-- "The Secret"
Best
of all are the gardens: hidden places where they have
burned down the buildings and kept the soil
poor so the plants won't grow with vulgar abundance.
Like the Japanese gardens made only of rocks and sand
so their beauty would not be obscured by appearances.
Like the maharaja who set aside the best courtyards
in his palace for the dandelions he imported from
England to be kept alive by the finest gardeners
in the world who knew how to work against nature.
-- "The Difficult Beauty"
May 21, 2024
In this 49-poem compilation, The Dance Most of All, poet Jack Gilbert reflects on scenes from his life with wisdom and melancholy. I find these poems interesting for several reasons. One is the wide variety of places and experiences mentioned—significant loves to simple observations remembered from Paris, Umbria, Nepal, Pittsburgh. I am also interested in Gilbert’s tone as he remembers, because I, too, look for meaning in memories. When reading his poems, I can see stains on his cheeks from tears cried long ago and then rest with him in each resolution.
The book’s title is taken from Gilbert’s poem “Ovid in Tears,” which ends
“… Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.”
I like his reviewing life as an imperfect yet beautiful dance. My most personally intriguing poem in this collection is “Not Easily.” Each line elicits a wow, hmmm, or oooh. I can picture it, but I can’t explain it.
“… We can swim in the Aegean,
but we can’t take it home. …”
The book’s title is taken from Gilbert’s poem “Ovid in Tears,” which ends
“… Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.”
I like his reviewing life as an imperfect yet beautiful dance. My most personally intriguing poem in this collection is “Not Easily.” Each line elicits a wow, hmmm, or oooh. I can picture it, but I can’t explain it.
“… We can swim in the Aegean,
but we can’t take it home. …”
August 21, 2017
The back half of the book slid by me without much sticking (though I wonder if that half would stick if I were older, since the point of view for most of them is an older man, trying to remember life), but many of the poems in the front half of the book stuck with me, especially "Meanwhile" ("Loneliness is the mother's milk of America. / The heart is a foreign country whose language none / of us is good at.") And "Painting in Plato's Wall" ("Love is not the part / we are both with that flowers / a little and then wanes as we / grow up. We cobble love together / from this and those of our machinery / until there is suddenly an apparition / that never existed before."). Gilbert has this lovely way of using perfect and unembellished nouns ("The body is the herb, / the mind is the honey.").
February 27, 2020
Christmas gift from Arianna and Thomas. Love!
April 16, 2020
I really loved this collection. Some poems were a little too metaphorical for me, but the ones that were amazing were really beautiful.
July 7, 2020
The meaning of some of the poems escaped me, but liked most and found them thought provoking.
June 2, 2023
meanwhile
danger of wisdom
going home
i think there’s been a turn of events ; 🌕
danger of wisdom
going home
i think there’s been a turn of events ; 🌕
November 24, 2023
Some good poems
The poems are mostly good, but there are a few poor ones. However, on this first reading, in my opinion, there are no great ones. There are some excellent lines.
The poems are mostly good, but there are a few poor ones. However, on this first reading, in my opinion, there are no great ones. There are some excellent lines.
October 19, 2024
3.5/5 stars rounded up
February 9, 2011
Jack Gilbert, The Dance Most of All (Knopf, 2009)
My run of excellent poetry continues (though it did die, however briefly, a few days after this review was written; cf. Let's Talk Honestly: My Poetry review earlier this issue) with Jack Gilbert's National Book Critics Circle Award-winning 2009 tome. From the opening lines, you know you're dealing with someone who is very, very good at what he does:
“It pleases him that the villa is on a mountain
flayed bare by the great sun. All around
are a thousand stone walls in ruin. He likes knowing
the house was built by the king's telegrapher....”
(“Everywhere and Forever”)
Observation and history intertwined and not a word more than is necessary. Sentence structure is standard, with just a bit of word choice (“flayed bare by the great sun”) to distinguish it from prose—but distinguished it is, and there is once again a sense of the thinness of the line between prose and poetry, but at the same time that understanding that the less finesse with which you straddle it, the wider it becomes. (As I mentioned before, Let's Talk Honestly. When you pitch headlong onto the poetry side of the chasm, you run to doggerel...)
Now, we're all aware of books that start off with a bang and then fall off the proverbial cliff, but that generally doesn't happen with poetry; it's tough to fake quality, and so once you know that you're going to be thrilled with this book, you'll immerse yourself in its pleasures. Yes, it's that good. Gilbert drops the formality eventually, though even his raunchiest moments seem to come with a curious distance to them (this, perhaps, is the reason the jacket copy hastened to qualify this as a “late-in-life” collection), but he never allows the sharp eyes and the ear for diction to slip. In some odd way, Gilbert's work reminds me of Hayden Carruth's, though I've never been able to quantify that link in my head; I'm just throwing it out there for reference. In any case, this is a phenomenal little book, and you want it. A shoo-in for my beast reads of the year list come December. **** ½
My run of excellent poetry continues (though it did die, however briefly, a few days after this review was written; cf. Let's Talk Honestly: My Poetry review earlier this issue) with Jack Gilbert's National Book Critics Circle Award-winning 2009 tome. From the opening lines, you know you're dealing with someone who is very, very good at what he does:
“It pleases him that the villa is on a mountain
flayed bare by the great sun. All around
are a thousand stone walls in ruin. He likes knowing
the house was built by the king's telegrapher....”
(“Everywhere and Forever”)
Observation and history intertwined and not a word more than is necessary. Sentence structure is standard, with just a bit of word choice (“flayed bare by the great sun”) to distinguish it from prose—but distinguished it is, and there is once again a sense of the thinness of the line between prose and poetry, but at the same time that understanding that the less finesse with which you straddle it, the wider it becomes. (As I mentioned before, Let's Talk Honestly. When you pitch headlong onto the poetry side of the chasm, you run to doggerel...)
Now, we're all aware of books that start off with a bang and then fall off the proverbial cliff, but that generally doesn't happen with poetry; it's tough to fake quality, and so once you know that you're going to be thrilled with this book, you'll immerse yourself in its pleasures. Yes, it's that good. Gilbert drops the formality eventually, though even his raunchiest moments seem to come with a curious distance to them (this, perhaps, is the reason the jacket copy hastened to qualify this as a “late-in-life” collection), but he never allows the sharp eyes and the ear for diction to slip. In some odd way, Gilbert's work reminds me of Hayden Carruth's, though I've never been able to quantify that link in my head; I'm just throwing it out there for reference. In any case, this is a phenomenal little book, and you want it. A shoo-in for my beast reads of the year list come December. **** ½
August 19, 2014
The Dance Most of All was Gilbert's last book of new poetry published in his lifetime. It's a slender book of poems that all seem to be looking back, while also waiting for some unnameable thing in the future.
This waiting and looking back combine best in the first of poem in the collection, Everywhere and Forever. A poem about his life with Michiko Nogami, the Japanese sculptor it was rumored Gilbert had married before her death in 1982 of cancer. The poem ends:
The sky is vast overhead. Neither of them knows
she is dying. He thinks of their eleven years together.
Realizes they used up all that particular time
everywhere in the cosmos, and forever.
There's a greater knowledge here, that time spent with a love one cannot be measured in mere minutes or years. Another great poem on this topic in the collection is Waiting and Finding. In this poem, Gilbert looks back even further, to kindergarten music class and always being stuck with the triangle to play, because he wouldn't rush to the front to get the tom toms. How the other instruments would play on, but the triangle had to wait for a single moment. There is beauty in the silence, the waiting, and then the sound. The poem ends with this revelation:
... Waiting meaning
without things. Meaning loves sometimes dying out,
sometimes being taken away. Meaning that often he lives
silent in the middle of the world's music. Waiting
for the best to come again. Beginning to hear the silence
as he waits. Beginning to like the silence maybe too much.
It's a thought provoking collection by a poet near the end of life. Ready for the silence, at peace with the rise and fall of his life.
This waiting and looking back combine best in the first of poem in the collection, Everywhere and Forever. A poem about his life with Michiko Nogami, the Japanese sculptor it was rumored Gilbert had married before her death in 1982 of cancer. The poem ends:
The sky is vast overhead. Neither of them knows
she is dying. He thinks of their eleven years together.
Realizes they used up all that particular time
everywhere in the cosmos, and forever.
There's a greater knowledge here, that time spent with a love one cannot be measured in mere minutes or years. Another great poem on this topic in the collection is Waiting and Finding. In this poem, Gilbert looks back even further, to kindergarten music class and always being stuck with the triangle to play, because he wouldn't rush to the front to get the tom toms. How the other instruments would play on, but the triangle had to wait for a single moment. There is beauty in the silence, the waiting, and then the sound. The poem ends with this revelation:
... Waiting meaning
without things. Meaning loves sometimes dying out,
sometimes being taken away. Meaning that often he lives
silent in the middle of the world's music. Waiting
for the best to come again. Beginning to hear the silence
as he waits. Beginning to like the silence maybe too much.
It's a thought provoking collection by a poet near the end of life. Ready for the silence, at peace with the rise and fall of his life.
October 29, 2018
Exquisite
Describes a soulful
embrace of the journey of life...I reread and discovered more than the words, more than the thoughts...dancing most of all...
Describes a soulful
embrace of the journey of life...I reread and discovered more than the words, more than the thoughts...dancing most of all...
March 30, 2011
Jack Gilbert has already released a fine body of poetic work into the world. His talent is quiet and immense, and you still see in these poems the fleeting luminous measures of his life that he has so elegantly captured on paper. Some of these poems are quite good. But some, unfortunately, are not quite up to his usual high standard.
They are all, of course, evocative. They are all sweetly nostalgic. They all aspire to transcendence, but only a few (The Danger of Wisdom, A Fact, Not Easily) succeed. But the collection as a whole is a bit too detached, too polite and exquisite. Poems of Ovid and Prospero and foreign climes. It is an absence of a sense of urgency, I think, that leaves me feeling an overall lack in this volume. The poems also, as a rule, fail to surprise the reader.
The good ones are so wonderful that the read is still decidedly worthwhile. But they are fewer than in Gilbert's other books, and require more of a commitment to the search.
They are all, of course, evocative. They are all sweetly nostalgic. They all aspire to transcendence, but only a few (The Danger of Wisdom, A Fact, Not Easily) succeed. But the collection as a whole is a bit too detached, too polite and exquisite. Poems of Ovid and Prospero and foreign climes. It is an absence of a sense of urgency, I think, that leaves me feeling an overall lack in this volume. The poems also, as a rule, fail to surprise the reader.
The good ones are so wonderful that the read is still decidedly worthwhile. But they are fewer than in Gilbert's other books, and require more of a commitment to the search.
November 18, 2013
Read as 4.5 stars.
Sort of a slow burn, this one. His voice didn't reel me in right away, but by the time I came to The Abundant Little, I realized that I was in love. Its final lines:
.... All things
are taken away. Indeed, indeed.
But we secretly think of our bodies
in the heart's storm and just after.
And the sound of careless happiness.
We touch finally only a little.
Like the shy tongue that comes fleetingly
in the dark. The acute little that is there.
The whole poem is brilliant, brilliant. But those quiet, devastating lines...
If every piece of the collection were as strong, it would be five stars for me immediately. And I may yet elevate it to that point as I know I will return to this book again.
Sort of a slow burn, this one. His voice didn't reel me in right away, but by the time I came to The Abundant Little, I realized that I was in love. Its final lines:
.... All things
are taken away. Indeed, indeed.
But we secretly think of our bodies
in the heart's storm and just after.
And the sound of careless happiness.
We touch finally only a little.
Like the shy tongue that comes fleetingly
in the dark. The acute little that is there.
The whole poem is brilliant, brilliant. But those quiet, devastating lines...
If every piece of the collection were as strong, it would be five stars for me immediately. And I may yet elevate it to that point as I know I will return to this book again.
January 16, 2016
I'm not a poet, so I feel highly unqualified to review a collection of poems. I lack the language to do it right. I think plenty of readers would relate to Gilbert's style; in ten or twenty years I might even like this collection better. Most of the poems were very backward-looking, contrasting life memories with the reality of the present moment. I didn't particularly like or relate to most of his memories, so this wasn't the book for me. Even feeling somewhat distanced from the subject matter, though, I definitely appreciated Gilbert's intense imagery and connectedness to the world as he described it.
May 17, 2010
Nothing beats "The Great Fires," but parts of this are still very fine. When Gilbert writes about his loves and Pittsburgh, he's at his best. Otherwise, I can sometimes wax less interested. I do still think he's one of the greatest poets alive, but he's getting so dang old that every book makes me think it's his last. He's also so honest that some poems are that perfect balance between lovely and utterly painful.
March 29, 2010
Marvelously lyrical poems unexpected at Gilbert's age. He celebrates the women in his life, sometimes more as muses than individuals. I loved Elsewhere And Forever, Ovid in Tears, Winter Happiness in Greece, Living Hungry After, The New Bride Almost Visible in Latin, Searching For It in a Guadalajara Dance Hall and Feeling History. Gilbert's take on life, even when he is being elegiac is appreciative.
November 22, 2011
there were some poems that just kind of flitted out of my mind the moment after i read them. yet all had lovely language and rhythm. some left me with lines of pure truth or delight. like "Love like the smell of basil. Richness beyond anyone's ability to cope with." (To know the Invisible) or "I feel around in myself to see if I mind. Maybe I am lonely. It is hard to know. It could be hidden in familiarity." (Suddenly Adult)
Read
November 20, 2012This book, his last, is not like like his other books. He takes more time with the lines and goes longer -- but not always to great effect. Sometimes the looseness of the line is welcomed, but it's often as if he did not have the strength to make them harder as he did with everything he wrote prior. A deep breath is nice and deserved but these poems aren't as good as he earlier offerings. Maybe I will change my mind when I'm 80.
(Read this as part of his collected poems.)
(Read this as part of his collected poems.)
March 30, 2009
A great, under appreciated poet. Probably will be his last book, since he is dying. I have a prepub. copy as I will be publishing 4 of his poems in the 30th anniversary edition of Visions-International in June, 2009.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews