a visit with jack gilbert

A friend shared a link to this great piece about the poet Jack Gilbert who, at past 80 years of age, recently won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his newest collection Refusing Heaven.

photo by Kate Davidson, NPR

You can visit the NPR website by clicking here and while there, be sure to click on the links provided to hear the inspiring interview with this reclusive poet who has spent most of his life outside the usual literary circles, stages, and spotlights, and whose poems speak poignantly to the two sides of the love and grief coin. Also included are clickable links that will allow you to listen to Gilbert reading several of his most lovely poems, "Infidelity," "Refusing Heaven," "By Small and Small," and "Getting Away With It."

I love Gilbert for his unabashed refusal to play the literary "game" (in the interview, he asserts that he is not a "professional poet," he's a "real poet"). I love Gilbert for saying there are just things about this life he doesn't like ("I don't like that my hair is thinning. I don't like that two of the women I loved died.") I love Gilbert for talking about how he is fond of making lists, including lists of things that he loves and wants to accomplish - a kindred spirit! I make lists too -- lists of things I love, things I want to do. Sometimes I have made a list of things I'd already done, just so I could cross something off of a to-do list. I am sure that Jack Gilbert (a man who once listed "to be in love before I die" on a list of things to do), would understand.