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A review by pickle_burner
Monolithos: Poems, 1962 and 1982 by Jack Gilbert
4.0
My favorite collection of Gilbert's remains The Great Fires, but this collection, his second and the first in 20 years after his initial collection, is still really strong. What I love about his writing is the spare style -- everything is stripped away except for the absolute essentials. You can tell that each line and each word in the line has been carefully considered and crafted, thoroughly scrubbed and re-scrubbed. Yet the music remains.
At times, some of his references are so direct and specific, and so little other context is provided that unless you are familiar with the oblique city/movie/song/building/etc that he is referring to, it can have little-to-no impact. But those are more the exception than the rule, and also, you know, Google.
Some of my favorite passages from the last 20-25 pages:
MEANING WELL
Marrying is like somebody
throwing the baby up.
It happy and them throwing it
higher. To the ceiling.
Which jars the loose bulb
and it goes out
as the baby starts down.
from LOSING
[...] Everything means a choice,
she had said, getting one thing and losing one. The love still
held me, but all at once I could, despite the rain, admit
to myself what I really wanted was this clarity.
PAVANE
I thought it said on the girl's red purse
A kind of sad dance and all day
wondered what was being defined.
Wisdom? The history of Poland?
All the ways of growing old?
No, I decided (walking back
to the hotel this morning), it must be love.
The real love that follows
early delight and ignorance.
A wonderful sad dance that comes after.
GETTING READY
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?
(Desire is not the problem. This far south,
we are careful not to mistake seizures for love.)
He sits there bewildered in a clamp of light.
In the stillness, the sun grinds him clean.
MY GRAVEYARD IN TOKYO
It was hard to see the moonlight
on the gravestones
because of the neon
in the parking lot.
I said I did in my letters.
But thinking back on it now,
I don't feel sure.
At times, some of his references are so direct and specific, and so little other context is provided that unless you are familiar with the oblique city/movie/song/building/etc that he is referring to, it can have little-to-no impact. But those are more the exception than the rule, and also, you know, Google.
Some of my favorite passages from the last 20-25 pages:
MEANING WELL
Marrying is like somebody
throwing the baby up.
It happy and them throwing it
higher. To the ceiling.
Which jars the loose bulb
and it goes out
as the baby starts down.
from LOSING
[...] Everything means a choice,
she had said, getting one thing and losing one. The love still
held me, but all at once I could, despite the rain, admit
to myself what I really wanted was this clarity.
PAVANE
I thought it said on the girl's red purse
A kind of sad dance and all day
wondered what was being defined.
Wisdom? The history of Poland?
All the ways of growing old?
No, I decided (walking back
to the hotel this morning), it must be love.
The real love that follows
early delight and ignorance.
A wonderful sad dance that comes after.
GETTING READY
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?
(Desire is not the problem. This far south,
we are careful not to mistake seizures for love.)
He sits there bewildered in a clamp of light.
In the stillness, the sun grinds him clean.
MY GRAVEYARD IN TOKYO
It was hard to see the moonlight
on the gravestones
because of the neon
in the parking lot.
I said I did in my letters.
But thinking back on it now,
I don't feel sure.