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.
strong hands names
Duende I can't remember her name. It's not as though I've been in bed with that many women. The truth is I can't even remember her face. I kind of know how strong her thighs were, and her beauty. But what I won't forget is the way she tore open the barbecued chicken with her hands, and wiped the grease on her breasts.
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.
heart people important
I like ornament at the right time, but I don't want a poem to be made out of decoration ... When I read the poems that matter to me, it stuns me how much the presence of the heart-in all its forms-is endlessly available there. To experience ourselves in an important way just knocks me out. It puzzles me why people have given that up for cleverness. Some of them are ingenious, more ingenious than I am, but so many of them aren't any good at being alive.