Jack Gilbert

Gilbert’s early life: Jack Gilbert was born in 1925 & grew up during the Depression in Pittsburgh, PA, where he dropped out of high school & worked as a Fuller Brush man, in the steel mill & other odd jobs before attending the University of Pittsburgh. After World War II, he lived in France & Italy, then landed in San Francisco among the Beats & was part of Jack Spicer’s “Poetry As Magic” workshop. His first book, Views of Jeopardy (1962), won the Yale Younger Poets Prize & made him a literary celebrity.

Gilbert as exile: In 1964, Gilbert left the US again, armed with a Guggenheim Fellowship & accompanied by poet Linda Gregg. Since then, he has lived in the Greek islands, in Denmark, England, France & Japan, and around the world, getting by on occasional teaching gigs & visiting poet stipends. Until recent years, he has kept his distance from the American poetry & publishing “establishment.” His second book, Monolithos (1982), was published 20 years after the first & takes its title from his time on Santorini.

Gilbert as poet: Gilbert’s subjects are the big poetic topics -- love & death -- but his poems find their depth in exquisitely sensitive revelation of daily experience. His work is devoted to a long & unflinching exploration of the human heart, and many of his best poems are love poems. His style is spare & direct; he doesn’t play word games & his ornaments are subtle, integral. His poems are not linguistically difficult, but they are profounding affecting, inspiring a fierce loyalty in his readers.