Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Poetic Obituaries: [Jack] Gilbert's career, then, is a curious

paradox of establishment acceptance and rejection. He won some prestigious awards, and was nominated for many others. Yet his poems do not appear in the anthologies of modern American poetry along with the likes of Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath and John Ashbery. It seems curious, and unjust, that such anthologies, which often include hundreds of poems, cannot find a place for "Pewter," "The Abnormal Is Not Courage," or "A Brief for the Defense," to name three.

Some critics and other readers are put off by certain trivial qualities in Gilbert's work, for example his penchant for drawing upon favorite motifs again and again--the moon, the Aegean, women's breasts.

from Los Angeles Times: Poet Jack Gilbert has died
then The New Yorker: Postscript: Jack Gilbert, 1925-2012
then Los Angeles Review of Books: Jack Gilbert, 1925--2012
then The New York Times: Jack Gilbert, a Poet Whose Words Transformed Lives, Is Dead at 87
then The Daily Californian: Poet, friend and vagabond Jack Gilbert dies in Berkeley

~~~~~~~~~~~

No comments :