Jack Gilbert



Jack Gilbert (born 1925) is an American poet.

Life and career
Born and raised in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania neighborhood of East Liberty, he attended Peabody High School then worked as a door-to-door salesman, an exterminator, and a steelworker. He graduated from 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. His first book of poetry Views of Jeopardy, (1962) was quickly recognized and Gilbert himself made into something of a media darling. He then retreated from his earlier activity in the San Francisco poetry scene, where he had participated in Jack Spicer's Poetry as Magic workshop, and moved to Europe. Living on a Guggenheim Fellowship he toured 15 countries as a lecturer on American Literature for the U.S. State Department and lived in England, Denmark and Greece. Nearly the whole of his career after the publication of his first book of poetry is marked by what he has described as a self-imposed isolation. Some have considered this 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. His books of poetry have been few and far between, however he has continuously maintained his writing and contributed to The American Poetry Review, Genesis West, The Quarterly, Poetry, Ironwood, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker.

Gilbert 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, another former student and 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 poet Laura Ulewicz during the late fifties and early sixties in San Francisco. Gilbert currently lives in Berkeley, California.

Awards

 * 1962 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for 'Views of Jeopardy''
 * 1962 nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for 'Views of Jeopardy''
 * Guggenheim Fellowship
 * Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
 * Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
 * 1982 American Book Award
 * 1982 National Book Critics Circle Award
 * 1983 Stanley Kunitz Prize for Monolithos
 * 1983 the American Poetry Review Prize for Monolithos
 * 1983 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
 * 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for Refusing Heaven

Poetry collections

 * Views of Jeopardy (1962)
 * 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)
 * The Dance Most of All (2009)

Novels
Co-authored with Jean Maclean and published by Olympia Press under the pseudonym Tor Kung:
 * My Mother Taught Me (1964)
 * Forever Ecstasy (1968)