Jack Gilbert
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Jack Gilbert (1925-) is an American poet.
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.'s neighborhood of East Liberty, he attended Peabody High School then worked as a door-to-door salesman, an exterminator, and a steelworker. He graduated the University of Pittsburgh, where he and his classmate Gerald Stern developed a serious interest in poetry and writing.
His work is distinguished by simple lyricism and straightforward clarity of tone. Though his first book of poetry (Views of Jeopardy, 1962) was quickly recognized and Gilbert himself made into something of a media darling, he retreated from his earlier activity in the San Francisco poetry scene (where he participated in Jack Spicer's Poetry as Magic workshop) and moved to Europe, touring from country to country while living on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Nearly the whole of his career after the publication of his first book of poetry is marked by what he has described in interviews as a self-imposed isolation— which some have considered to be a spiritual quest to describe his alienation from mainstream American culture, and others have dismissed as little more than an extended period as a "professional houseguest" living off of wealthy American literary admirers. Subsequent books of poetry have been few and far between. He continued to write, however, and between books has occasionally contributed to The American Poetry Review, Genesis West, The Quarterly, Poetry, Ironwood, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker.
He is a close friend of the poet Linda Gregg who was once his student and to whom he was married for six years. He was also married to Michiko Nogami (a language instructor based in San Francisco, now deceased, about whom he has written many of his poems). He was also in a significant long term relationship with the Beat poet Laura Ulewicz during the fifties in San Francisco. Gilbert currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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[edit] Awards
- Views of Jeopardy won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in Poetry in 1962.
- Monolithos won the Stanley Kunitz Prize and the American Poetry Review Prize and was a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1983, the American Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1982.[1]
- Gilbert has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts among other prizes.
- Refusing Heaven won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
[edit] Works
- Views of Jeopardy (1962)
- In Genesis West volume one published in the Fall of 1962 as a celebration of Jack Gilbert's poetry. This volume includes poems by Jack and interview of Jack by Gordon Lish.
- Monolithos (1984)
- Kochan (1984), A limited edition chapbook of nine poems, two of which were later republished in The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992; seven of the poems have not been otherwise published, including "Nights and Four Thousand Mornings," the longest poem Gilbert has published
- The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 (1994)
- Refusing Heaven (2005)
- Tough Heaven: Poems of Pittsburgh (2006)
- Transgressions: Selected Poems (UK, 2006)
[edit] References
Source: Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2007. PEN (Permanent Entry Number): 0000036531.
Pulitzer Prizes, Winners for 1983 and Nominated Finalists, <http://www.pulitzer.org/cyear/1983w.html>. Retrieved on 21 November 2007
