Jack Gilbert (February 18, 1925 – November 13, 2012) was an American poet. Gilbert was acquainted with Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg, both prominent figureheads of the Beat Movement, but is not considered a Beat Poet; he described himself as a "serious romantic." Over his five-decade-long career, he published five full collections of poetry. he attended Peabody High School, but failed out before earning a degree. Gilbert then worked as a door-to-door salesman, an exterminator, and a steelworker.

Despite having no high school degree, Gilbert applied to the University of Pittsburgh and due to a clerical error was admitted. During these college years he and his classmate Gerald Stern developed a serious interest in poetry and writing. He graduated in 1954.

Gilbert received his master's degree from San Francisco State University in 1963.

Career

After college, Gilbert went to Paris and worked briefly at the Herald Tribune before moving to Italy. Gilbert spent two years there before moving to New York and then to San Francisco, where his life as a poet began.

His work has been distinguished by simple lyricism and straightforward clarity of tone, as well as a resonating control over his emotions: “We look up at the stars and they are / not there. We see memory / of when they were, once upon a time. / And that too is more than enough.” His first book of poetry, Views of Jeopardy (1962), won the Yale Younger Poets Prize and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize,

He then retreated from his earlier activity in the San Francisco poetry scene, where he had participated in Jack Spicer's Poetry as Magic workshop,

On April 15, 2013, it was announced that Gilbert's Collected Poems was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. The Pulitzer jury's citation read:

Personal life

Much of Gilbert's work is about his relationships with women. While in Italy, he met Gianna Gelmetti, a romantic partner who appears frequently in his work. The relationship ended after a year. Gilbert was a close friend of the poet Linda Gregg, whom he met when she was nineteen and his student in San Francisco, and with whom he was in a relationship for six years. Of the poet, Gregg once said, "All Jack ever wanted to know was that he was awake—that the trees in bloom were almond trees—and to walk down the road to get breakfast. He never cared if he was poor or had to sleep on a park bench."

He was also in a significant long-term relationship with the poet Laura Ulewicz during the late fifties and early sixties in San Francisco. Ulewicz was a great influence on his early work; in fact much of his characteristic style for which he later became known came directly from her, and his first book was dedicated to her. Gilbert was married to Michiko Nogami, another former student and a Japanese language instructor 21 years his junior, about whom he wrote many of his poems. Nogami died of cancer at the age of 36, in 1982.

  • 1983 Stanley Kunitz Prize for Monolithos
  • 1994 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
  • 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for Refusing Heaven
  • 2013 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems
  • My Mother Taught Me (1964) From the book jacket: "This is the tale of Lars, a Swedish boy, raised in an all-male orphanage without ever seeing even pictures of women, adopted into a new household with enthusiastic siblings and an energetic foster-mother."
  • Forever Ecstasy (1968) From the book jacket: "An amazing story about schoolboys, led by Paul and the devious but cowardly Rick, who at the end of the school year find themselves holding a young geometry teacher... right where they want her."

Anthologies

/* Anthology */ "19 New American Poets of the Golden Gate": editor. poet Philip Dow, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1984).

Gilbert's essay "Real Nouns" appears, as do select poems.

References

Further reading

  • Genesis West volume one, published in the fall of 1962, is a celebration of Jack Gilbert's poetry. This volume includes poems by Jack and an interview by Gordon Lish.
  • Allen Randolph, Jody. Interview with Jack Gilbert. Lannan Foundation: Readings and Conversations Series. VHS. Los Angeles: Lannan Foundation, 1997.
  • Profile and poems at the Academy of American Poets
  • Profile and poetry at the Poetry Foundation
  • "The Recluse: Rescuing the poet Jack Gilbert from oblivion." May 9, 2005 Slate magazine
  • Poems and Biography of Jack Gilbert
  • NPR:"Jack Gilbert: Notes from a Well-Observed Life" (Poems and audio Interview. April 30, 2006; "Jack Gilbert". NPR audio interview June 18, 1997
  • Rejoicing With Jack Gilbert
  • David Orr -
  • Correspondence with Gerald Stern