Jack Gilbert's Lannan Foundation reading (1995)

Jack Gilbert reads and introduces eight poems from his collections MONOLITHOS (1982) and THE GREAT FIRES (1994). This is an extract from a longer reading he gave for the Lannan Foundation in Los Angeles on 11 November 1995 when he was also interviewed by Jody AllenRandolph. That interview is posted as a separate video at • Jack Gilbert's Lannan ...
The poems are all included in TRANSGRESSIONS: SELECTED POEMS (Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2006) and COLLECTED POEMS (Knopf, 2012). The poems are (with page numbers from TRANSGRESSIONS): 'Pewter' (35), 'Finding Something' (65), 'Going Wrong' (57), 'A Description of Happiness in København' (49), 'Searching for Pittsburgh" (68), 'Alone' (79), 'Highlights and Interstices' (94), and 'Tear It Down' [earlier text] (61).
Jack Gilbert (1925-2012) was a major figure in American poetry, but was always a total outsider, defiantly unfashionable and publishing only five collections in five decades. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was educated in Pittsburgh and San Francisco, where he later participated in Jack Spicer's famous 'Poetry as Magic' Workshop at San Francisco State College in 1957. Initially associated with the Beats, he left America after winning the Yale Younger Poets Prize with VIEW OF JEOPARDY in 1962, eking out a living for many years on Greek islands, most notably on Paros. His second collection, MONOLITHOS, appeared twenty years later in 1982, but he made his strongest impression on American readers with two later collections, THE GREAT FIRES (1994) and REFUSING HEAVEN (2005), winner of the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award. His final collection, THE DANCE MOST OF ALL (2009), was followed by his COLLECTED POEMS from Knopf in 2012. His only UK edition, TRANSGRESSIONS: SELECTED POEMS (Bloodaxe Books, 2006), covers his collections from VIEW OF JEOPARDY to REFUSING HEAVEN. VIEWS OF JEOPARDY, MONOLITHOS and REFUSING HEAVEN were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and REFUSING HEAVEN was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other honours included a Lannan Literary Award and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Jack Gilbert wrote compellingly about passion, loss and loneliness. His poems are filled with a sense of wonder at existence and with his surprise at finding happiness -- despite grief, struggle and alienation -- in a life spent in luminous understanding of his own blessings and shortcomings. His work is both a rebellious assertion of clarity and a profound affirmation of the world in all its aspects. His poems are about being alive: the nature of the self, the life he lived and the people he loved.
This video is copyright Lannan Foundation 1996 and posted on UA-cam with the permission of the Lannan Foundation. Director: Dan Griggs. Executive producer: Jeanie Kim. Jack Gilbert's TRANSGRESSIONS is available from Bloodaxe Books in the UK: www.bloodaxeboo...