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.