Writer-in-Residence Spring 2004
Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert was born in Pittsburgh, and grew up there. He was educated at the University of Pittsburgh and at San Francisco State University. He has lived for many years in Europe, Japan, and on the island of Paros in Greece. For a number of years, he made his home in San Francisco when he was not living abroad. He currently lives in western Massachusetts.
His first book of poems, Views of Jeopardy, was the 1962 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, the most prestigious first book award in the United States. In 1982, Knopf published his second book of poems, Monolithos. Both Views of Jeopardy and Monolithos were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The Great Fires (Knopf, 1992) is his most recent book of poems, a book also widely praised. Gilbert has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poetry has been featured in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ironwood, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and other journals.
We feel very honored that Mr. Gilbert will be a visiting professor for our spring term. He will be teaching the graduate Colloquium in Poetry (English 581), in addition to scheduling individual conferences. He will give a public reading in the spring.
We think of lifetimes as mostly the exceptional
and sorrows. Marriage we remember as the children,
vacations, and emergencies. The uncommon parts.
But the best is often when nothing is happening.
The way a mother picks up the child almost without
noticing and carries her across Waller Street
while talking with the other woman. What if she
could keep all of that? Our lives happen between
the memorable. I have lost two thousand habitual
breakfasts with Michiko. What I miss most about
her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.
I never thought Michiko would come back
after she died. But if she did, I knew
it would be as a lady in a long white dress.
It is strange that she has returned
as somebody's dalmation. I meet
the man walking her on a leash
almost every week. He says good morning
and I stoop down to calm her. He said
once that she was never like that with
other people. Sometimes she is tethered
on the lawn when I go by. If nobody
is around, I sit on the grass. When she
finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap
and we watch each other's eyes as I whisper
in her soft ears. She cares nothing about
the mystery. She likes it best when
I touch her head and tell her small
things about my days and our friends.
That makes her happy the way it always did.
Digging into the apple
with my thumbs.
Scraping out the clogged nails
and digging deeper.
Refusing the moon color.
Refusing the smell and memories.
Digging in with the sweet juice
running along my hands unpleasantly.
Refusing the sweetness.
Turning my hands to gouge out chunks.
Feeling the juice sticky
on my wrists. The skin itching.
Getting to the wooden part.
Getting to the seeds.
Going on.
Not taking anyone's word for it.
Getting beyond the seeds.