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Collected Poems (2012)

by Jack Gilbert(Favorite Author)

4.54 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

030726968X (ISBN13: 9780307269683)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Knopf

review 1: Lance Cleland (Editorial Assistant, Tin House Magazine): With his recent passing, I suppose Jack Gilbert’s collected work might seem like a sentimental pick. I’m alright with that. As a poet, Gilbert was never afraid to get sentimental. He knew melancholy could find you in the cereal aisle and rather than trying to turn that into something ironic (something many of his contemporaries do at an alarming rate), he embraced the ways emotion run our lives. I find this to be both brave and comforting. There is a direct nature to almost every line he writes, which forces you to react immediately to the work. His heart is skidding and so your heart is skidding. There is little unwrapping to be done here. Which is not to say that Gilbert’s work does not stay with you, that y... moreou will not linger over his poems from morning coffee to your nightcap. It just that his words burrow quickly. Collectively, they narrate a life lived and one that is just beginning.
review 2: Jarrell's dictum is that a great lyric poet writes a half-dozen great poems in his life. Gilbert clearly qualifies as one of the great American poets. The heart of his achievement is in Monolithos (1982) and Great Fires (1994), where the ratio of first-rate poems to lesser poems is quite high. His first volume, a Yale Series volume, is not as good, which is to be expected, and the two late volumes are lesser too, not because Gilbert's manner and voice have changed but rather because the writing has become less about the embodiment of emotion and more about the statement of emotion. The later poems are more like small essays than the powerful poems of the earlier decades. Having Gilbert's work all in one location like this also makes it easier to "see" Gilbert in his time. He pursued his own path, but he is still clearly an American poet of the 20th century. Most collections of poetry contain a couple of pages, at best, of first-rate work. This volume has dozens. less

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