A Poem For Saturday

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This week, the great American poet, Jack Gilbert, passed away at age 87. John Penner's LA Times essay on Gilbert summarized the man and his writing this way:

Of Gilbert’s favored words, probably none conveys better the poet–his life, his work, his ambitions for both–than magnitude. "Poetry, for me," he declares in a 1965 essay, "is a witnessing to magnitude." In poems he sings of a "magnitude of pain, of being that much alive," and "a magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace."

Read his Paris Review interview here. When asked about the subjects of his poems, he responded not just with a comment on his literary preoccupations, but with a meditation on living:

Those I love. Being. Living my life without being diverted into things that people so often get diverted into. Being alive is so extraordinary I don’t know why people limit it to riches, pride, security—all of those things life is built on. People miss so much because they want money and comfort and pride, a house and a job to pay for the house. And they have to get a car. You can’t see anything from a car. It’s moving too fast. People take vacations. That’s their reward—the vacation. Why not the life? Vacations are second-rate. People deprive themselves of so much of their lives—until it’s too late.

This spring the Dish featured his remarkable poem, "Tear It Down," here. Our poetry editor, Alice Quinn, remembered him here. This weekend, to honor Gilbert's work, we'll be running three of his poems. The first of these is "Failing and Flying":

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
But just coming to the end of his triumph.