Jack Gilbert Quotes

• Being alive is so extraordinary I don’t know why people limit it to riches, pride, security—all of those things life is built on. People miss so much because they want money and comfort and pride, a house and a job to pay for the house. And they have to get a car. You can’t see anything from a car. It’s moving too fast. People take vacations. That’s their reward—the vacation. Why not the life?

  Jack Gilbert

  Jobs, Moving, Pride

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• Debemos desaprender las constelaciones para ver las estrellas.

  Jack Gilbert

  Stars, Lovely, Constellations

  Jack Gilbert (2013). “The Great Fires: Poems, 1982-1992”, p.15, Knopf

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• We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

  Jack Gilbert

  Risk, Devil, Attention

  Jack Gilbert, “A Brief For The Defense”

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• We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.

  Jack Gilbert

  Acceptance, World, Ruthlessness

  Jack Gilbert (2009). “Refusing Heaven”, p.3, Knopf

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• I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.

  Jack Gilbert

  Dream, Vocabulary, Might

  Jack Gilbert (2013). “The Great Fires: Poems, 1982-1992”, p.11, Knopf

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• The heart lies to itself because it must.

  Jack Gilbert

  Lying, Heart

  Jack Gilbert (2012). “Collected Poems”, p.214, Knopf

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• Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her.

  Jack Gilbert

  Dream, Angel, Heart

  Jack Gilbert, “Horses At Midnight Without A Moon”

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• I ask myself what is the sound of women? What is the word for that still thing I have hunted inside them for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy, the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper down where a woman's heart is holding its breath, where something very far away in that body is becoming something we don't have a name for.

  Jack Gilbert

  Women, Heart, Dark

  Jack Gilbert (2009). “Refusing Heaven”, p.26, Knopf

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• Why do so manysettle for so little? I don't understand why they're not greedy for what's inside them.

  Jack Gilbert

  Littles, Greedy

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• How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.

  Jack Gilbert

  Mean, Doe, Language

  Jack Gilbert (2012). “Collected Poems”, p.125, Knopf

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• Everyone forgets Icarus also flew.

  Jack Gilbert

  Forget, Flew, Icarus

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• WAKING AT NIGHT The blue river is grey at morning and evening. There is twilight at dawn and dusk. I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end.

  Jack Gilbert

  Morning, Lying, Twilight

  Jack Gilbert (2012). “Collected Poems”, p.354, Knopf

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• Lo que más sentimos no tiene más nombre que el ámbar, los arqueros, la canela, los caballos y los pájaros.

  Jack Gilbert

  Horse, Archer, Names

  Jack Gilbert (2013). “The Great Fires: Poems, 1982-1992”, p.11, Knopf

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• I like ornament at the right time, but I don't want a poem to be made out of decoration ... When I read the poems that matter to me, it stuns me how much the presence of the heart-in all its forms-is endlessly available there. To experience ourselves in an important way just knocks me out. It puzzles me why people have given that up for cleverness. Some of them are ingenious, more ingenious than I am, but so many of them aren't any good at being alive.

  Jack Gilbert

  Corazón, Gente, Importante

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• I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with my mouth against the tiny ear and throw him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up. The only way to leave even the smallest trace. So that all his life her son would feel gladness unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined city of steel in America. Each time almost remembering something maybe important that got lost.

  Jack Gilbert

  Son, America, Cities

  Jack Gilbert (2013). “The Great Fires: Poems, 1982-1992”, p.36, Knopf

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• Duende I can't remember her name. It's not as though I've been in bed with that many women. The truth is I can't even remember her face. I kind of know how strong her thighs were, and her beauty. But what I won't forget is the way she tore open the barbecued chicken with her hands, and wiped the grease on her breasts.

  Jack Gilbert

  Strong, Hands, Names

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• We are resident inside with the machinery, a glimmering spread throughout the apparatus. We exist with a wind whispering inside and our moon flexing. Amid the ducts, inside the basilica of bones. The flesh is a neighborhood, but not the life.

  Jack Gilbert

  Moon, Wind, Whispering

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• Suddenly this defeat. This rain. The blues gone gray And the browns gone gray And yellow A terrible amber. In the cold streets Your warm body. In whatever room Your warm body. Among all the people Your absence The people who are always Not you. I have been easy with trees Too long. Too familiar with mountains. Joy has been a habit. Now Suddenly This rain.

  Jack Gilbert

  Rain, Yellow, Long

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• The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets after summer rain on maples and sycamore.

  Jack Gilbert

  Summer, Rain, Night

  Jack Gilbert (2013). “The Dance Most of All: Poems”, p.23, Knopf

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• Todos ardemos en el tiempo, pero cada uno se consume
  a su propia velocidad.

  Jack Gilbert

  Time, Burning, Speed

  Jack Gilbert (2009). “Refusing Heaven”, p.19, Knopf

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• Are the angels of her bed the angels who come near me alone in mine? Are the green trees in her window the color is see in ripe plums? If she always sees backward and upside down without knowing it what chance do we have? I am haunted by the feeling that she is saying melting lords of death, avalanches, rivers and moments of passing through, And I am replying, "Yes, yes. Shoes and pudding.

  Jack Gilbert

  Angel, Color, Shoes

  Jack Gilbert (2012). “Collected Poems”, p.218, Knopf

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• We think the fire eats the wood. We are wrong. The wood reaches out to the flame. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy, the manner in which we and the world meet each new day.

  Jack Gilbert

  Inspirational, Thinking, Fire

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• We exist with a wind whispering inside and our moon flexing. Amid the ducts, inside the basilica of bones.

  Jack Gilbert

  Moon, Wind, Whispering

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• Fame is a lot of fun, but it's not interesting. I loved being noticed and praised, even the banquets. But they didn't have anything that I wanted. After about six months, I found it boring.

  Jack Gilbert

  Fun, Interesting, Six Months

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• But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.

  Jack Gilbert

  Summer, Stars, Ocean

  Jack Gilbert, “Failing And Flying”

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