Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbertwas an American poet...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth18 February 1925
CountryUnited States of America
dream vocabulary might
I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.
world accepting stubbornness
We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.
jobs moving pride
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?
dream heart angel
Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
littles greedy
Why do so manysettle for so little? I don't understand why they're not greedy for what's inside them.
women heart dark
I ask myself what is the sound of women? What is the word for that still thing I have hunted inside them for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy, the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper down where a woman's heart is holding its breath, where something very far away in that body is becoming something we don't have a name for.
time burning speed
We are all burning in time, but each is consumed at his own speed.
moon wind whispering
We exist with a wind whispering inside and our moon flexing. Amid the ducts, inside the basilica of bones.
horse archer names
What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.
successful thinking enough
I'm vain enough to think that I've made a successful life. I've had everything I've ever wanted. You can't beat that.
summer rain night
The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets after summer rain on maples and sycamore.
moon wind whispering
We are resident inside with the machinery, a glimmering spread throughout the apparatus. We exist with a wind whispering inside and our moon flexing. Amid the ducts, inside the basilica of bones. The flesh is a neighborhood, but not the life.
morning lying twilight
WAKING AT NIGHT The blue river is grey at morning and evening. There is twilight at dawn and dusk. I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end.
night long rope
THE ABANDONED VALLEY Can you understand being alone so long you would go out in the middle of the night and put a bucket into the well so you could feel something down there tug at the other end of the rope?