Jack Gilbert

Jack Gilbert is from Pittsburgh, and works the city into a lot of his poems. He tends to be quite philosophical in his poetry, and he beautifully captures the fullness of experience (the way W.C. Williams wished he could...)

Less Being More
Jack Gilbert

It started when he was a young man
and went to Italy. He climbed mountains,
wanting to be a poet. But was troubled
by what Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in
her journal about William having worn
himself out searching all day to find
a simile for nightingale. It seemed
a long way from the tug of passion.
He ended up staying in pensione
where the old women would take up
the children in the middle of the night
to rent the room, carrying them warm
and clinging to the mothers, the babies
making a mewing sound. He began hunting
for the second rate. The insignificant
ruins, the negligible museums, the back-
country villages with only one pizzeria
and two small bars. The unimproved.

Poetry is back.

I've had an insane quarter... but I'm still discovering poetry, so here's a bit of Gibran.


Song of the Flower XXIII
By Kahlil Gibran


By the voice of Nature;
I am a star fallen from the
Blue tent upon the green carpet.
I am the daughter of the elements
With whom Winter conceived;
To whom Spring gave birth; I was
Reared in the lap of Summer and I
Slept in the bed of Autumn.

At dawn I unite with the breeze
To announce the coming of light;
At eventide I join the birds
In bidding the light farewell.

The plains are decorated with
My beautiful colors, and the air
Is scented with my fragrance.

As I embrace Slumber the eyes of
Night watch over me, and as I
Awaken I stare at the sun, which is
The only eye of the day.

I drink dew for wine, and hearken to
The voices of the birds, and dance
To the rhythmic swaying of the grass.

I am the lover's gift; I am the wedding wreath;
I am the memory of a moment of happiness;
I am the last gift of the living to the dead;
I am a part of joy and a part of sorrow.

But I look up high to see only the light,
And never look down to see my shadow.
This is wisdom which man must learn.

You are Gorgeous and I am Coming

Sorry, I haven't posted for a while... I made it through Lent, and wanted to just sit for a while with all of the poems I've recently discovered, letting them sink in before I search for more poetry. But a friend told me about this poem today, and I have to share it. It's an acrostic (meaning, the first letter of each line spells out a name) by Frank O'Hara, for his lover, Vincent Warren, referring to the "el" train in Chicago:


Vaguely I hear the purple roar of the torn-down Third Avenue El
it sways slightly but firmly like a hand or a golden-downed thigh
normally I don’t think of sounds as colored unless I’m feeling corrupt
concrete Rimbaud obscurity of emotion which is simple and very definite
even lasting, yes it may be that dark and purifying wave, the death of boredom
nearing the heights themselves may destroy you in the pure air
to be further complicated, confused, empty but refilling, exposed to light

With the past falling away as an acceleration of nerves thundering and shaking
aims its aggregating force like the Métro towards a realm of encircling travel
rending the sound of adventure and becoming ultimately local and intimate 
repeating the phrases of an old romance which is constantly renewed by the
endless originality of human loss the air the stumbling quiet of breathing
newly the heavens’ stars all out we are all for the captured time of our being

Still in love with Levertov...

This is a simple, straightforward poem about having friends who are far away...

Complaint and Rejoinder

There's a kind of despair, when your friends
are scattered across the world; you see
how therefore never is there a way
each can envision truly
the others of whom you speak.
                    Oceans divide your life,
you want to place all of it -
people, places, their tones, atmospheres,
everything shared uniquely with each -
into a single bowl, like petals, like sand
in a pail. No one can ever hear or tell
the whole story.

(And do you really think
this would not be so if you lived
all of your life on an island,
in a village too small to contain
a single stranger?)

- Denise Levertov

Memory demands so much

Memory demands so much,
it wants every fiber
told and retold.                      
                      It gives and gives
but for a price, making you 
risk drudgery, lapse
into document, treacheries
of glaring noon and a slow march.
Leaf never before
seen or envisioned, flying spider
of rose-red autumn, playing
a lone current of undecided wind,
lift me with you, take me
off this ground of memory that clings
to my feet like thick clay,
exacting gratitude for gifts and gifts.
Take me flying before
you vanish, leaf, before
I have time to remember you,
intent instead on being
in the midst of that flight,
of those unforeseeable words.

- Denise Levertov

What Goes Unsaid

I love it when a poem forever changes the way I think about something... My mind will now forever be a forest:

In each mind, even the most candid,

there are forests, where needled haze overshadows

the slippery duff and patches of snow long-frozen, 

or else where mangroves, proliferant, vine-entwisted,

loom over warm mud that slowly bubbles.

In these forests there live certain events, shards 

of memory, scraps of once-heard lore, intimations

once familiar - some painful, shameful, some

drably or laughable inconsequent, others 

thoughts that the thinker 

could never hold fast and begin to tell.

And some - a few - that are noble, tender,

and so complete in themselves, they had 

no need of saying.

                           There they dwell,

no sky above them, resting

like dragonflies on the dense air, or nested

on inaccessible twigs.

It is right that there are these secrets

(even the weightless ones have perhaps

some part to play in the unperceiveable whole)

and these forests; privacies

and the deep terrain to receive them.

Right that they rise at times into our ken,

and are acknowledged.

- Denise Levertov

Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable...

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-know of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall -
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser -
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

- Seamus Heaney

More Louise...

Love in the Moonlight

Sometimes a man or woman forces his despair
on another person, which is called
baring the heart, alternatively, baring the soul -
meaning for this moment they acquired souls -
outside, a summer evening, a whole world
thrown away on the moon: groups of silver forms
which might be buildings or trees, the narrow garden
where the cat hides, rolling on its back in the dust,
the rose, the coreopsis, and in the dark, the gold
        dome of the capitol
converted to an alloy of moonlight, shape
without detail, the myth, the archetype, the soul
filled with fire that is moonlight really, taken
from another source, and briefly
shining as the moon shines: stone or not,
the moon is still that much of a living thing.

Nostalgia

Today, I'm nostalgic for Emily Bronte:

Shall earth no more inspire thee,
Thou lonely dreamer now?
Since passion may not fire thee
Shall Nature cease to bow?
Thy mind is ever moving
In regions dark to thee;
Recall its useless roving—
Come back and dwell with me.
I know my mountain breezes
Enchant and soothe thee still—
I know my sunshine pleases
Despite thy wayward will.
When day with evening blending
Sinks from the summer sky,
I’ve seen thy spirit bending
In fond idolatry.
I’ve watched thee every hour;
I know my mighty sway,
I know my magic power
To drive thy griefs away.
Few hearts to mortals given
On earth so wildly pine;
Yet none would ask a heaven
More like this earth than thine.
Then let my winds caress thee;
Thy comrade let me be—
Since nought beside can bless thee,
Return and dwell with me.