Monday, November 12, 2012

"Poet Jack Gilbert's time of triumph and loss"


Famous author Anne Rice posted on Facebook "Hello, People of the Page. Jack Gilbert is a great American poet I've mentioned here before. Here is an article about him from today's Los Angeles Times. His latest book is available on Amazon and at other vendors"
I immediately went to the page and read  "Poet Jack Gilbert's time of triumph and loss" I write poetry myself, and in one brief passage of Gilbert's prose: "What if the heart does not pale as the body wanes / but is like the sun that blazes hotter each day / on these immense, perishing fields? What then?" ...in just that bit of immense feeling, Gilbert took me into his world and heart.
Thank you Anne Rice for opening the way to those like myself who did not know Jack Gilbert. I am touched that Gilbert was a former steal worker, and that at Gilbert's readings crowd ordinary people "interested in serious literature and looking for the illumination of a heart they recognized as their own."
Written by John Penner the article about Gilbert, who is now in a nursing home, reminds me of a poem a carpenter, my late husband Victor, wrote: “I’ve torn heaven from the skies/ Made of hell a paradise/ Forgiven God, forgiven the devil/ Does anyone have a dime?”
As I continued to read I sob for my mom Carmen, who not long ago was vital and now is also in a nursing home after a sudden stroke: her days feel like petals falling from the garden of flowers she once tended.

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