The Great Fires

Jack Gilbert · ★★★★★

...It is not about the spirit. The spirit dances, comes and goes. But the soul is nailed to us like lentils and fatty bacon lodged under the ribs. What lasted is what the soul ate. The way a child knows the world by putting it part by part into his mouth. As I tried to gnaw my way into the Lord, working to put my heart against that heart. Lying in the wheat at night, letting the rain after all the dry months have me. This is my first exposure to the late poet Jack Gilbert who died in Berkeley in 2012. I'm floored. So many of these pieces speak with such a directness and plainspoken wisdom about the nature of living. It is hard not to be convinced of Gilbert's worldview. The Japanese think it strange we paint our old wooden houses when it takes so long to find the wabi in them. They prefer the bonsai tree after the valiant blossoming is over, the leaves fallen. When bareness reveals a merit born in the vegetable struggling. Soul versus Spirit, vegetable struggling, the nature of existence and what makes a person a person. These ideas run through each of Gilbert's poems, from the inspirational to the utterly tragic. ...If ecstasy means we are taken over by something, we become an occupied country, the audience to an intensity we are only the proscenium for. The man does not want to know rapture by standing outside himself. He wants to know delight as the native land he is. He often does this: pulls apart experience so he can look at its objects and the lenses through which the objects are assigned value. It is a heady trick but in Gilbert's hands there is nothing tricky about it, merely an impulse towards truth. Nowhere is the cleverness of Merwin nor the confidence of William Carlos Williams. Instead you have a voice that is earnest and at times humble, but always willing to share the whole story whether it makes him look good or not. Truly a pre-social media age quality. I have so many favorites in this collection that a list of them would be close to a snapshot of the table of contents. This is a wise collection. Poems earned through a life of experiences both sad and inspirational but never precious, often just wondering. It will be easy to call this one of my favorite books of poetry.