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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780375710858
ISBN: 037571085X
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 112
Publication Date: March 13, 2007
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: March 13, 2007
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
More than a decade after Jack Gilbert’s The Great Fires, this highly anticipated new collection shows the continued development of a poet who has remained fierce in his avoidance of the beaten path. In Refusing Heaven, Gilbert writes compellingly about the commingled passion, loneliness, and sometimes surprising happiness of a life spent in luminous understanding of his own blessings and shortcomings: “The days and nights wasted . . . Long hot afternoons / watching ants while the cicadas railed / in the Chinese elm about the brevity of life.” Time slows down in these poems, as Gilbert creates an aura of curiosity and wonder at the fact of existence itself. Despite powerful intermittent griefs–over the women he has parted from or the one lost to cancer (an experience he captures with intimate precision)–Gilbert’s choice in this volume is to “refuse heaven.” He prefers this life, with its struggle and alienation and delight, to any paradise. His work is both a rebellious assertion of the call to clarity and a profound affirmation of the world in all its aspects. It braces the reader in its humanity and heart.
From the Hardcover edition.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Jack Gilbert is an excellent poet. Like all books of poetry, this volume has many wonderful poems and a few clunkers. Sometimes his poem endings are a wonderful surprise or a shock which is the mark of a excellent craftsman which he certainly is. That said,a few poems in the volume shoot themselves in the foot with contrived endings. Definitely recommended.
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A book review in the LA Times encouraged me to buy this slim but rich book. Poetry, I think, attempts to express the unexpressible and the best poets do that in language accessible to all. Gilbert does that with sublime beauty. There's a great deal of wisdom here as well: "We're all burning in time, but each is consumed at his own speed. Each is the product of his spirt's refraction, of the inflection of that mind. It is the pace of our living that makes the world available." (Burning, p. 19) ... Read More
Rating: -
Jack Gilbert's "The Abnormal Is Not Courage" has been on my wall for some 25 years -- words to live by. It has been joined by "A Brief for the Defense." Gilbert is a poet who is not afraid of ideas, of hard truths, of inherent conflict. His poems aren't about how to live, but why.
Rating: -
I am an avid reader of poetry: classical and modern, in English, in translation, in other languages, in collections and magazines, in any form I can find it. Without a doubt, this is one of the finest books of poetry I've ever read, maybe the finest. Each poem is lyrical and elegant - complete in its own right - but the collection also works as a whole. The poems are spare, and for the most part, sad, speaking to love and loss, life, letting go, and holding on. They are classical subjects of poetry, ... Read More
Rating: -
Gilbert is not a workshop poet, let alone politically correct in any way. He writes to live and not to get tenure. He's overlooked these days; he's old, out of step, and has never published often. Maybe that's the fate of masters who have written poems that can save your life, like this one:
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, ... Read More
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Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780375710858
ISBN: 037571085X
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 112
Publication Date: March 13, 2007
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: March 13, 2007
Studio: Knopf