The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Thu 2/2/06)

[RetroLounge]

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
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.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert

****************

RL

[RetroLounge]

1. About The Author...

Jack Gilbert was born in Pittsburgh. He is the author of The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992; Monolithos, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Views of Jeopardy, the 1962 winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize. He has also published a limited edition of elegiac poems under the title Kochan. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Gilbert lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

About Refusing Heaven:
More than a decade after Jack Gilbert's The Great Fires, this highly anticipated new collection shows the continued development of a poet who has remained fierce in his avoidance of the beaten path. In Refusing Heaven, Gilbert writes compellingly about the commingled passion, loneliness, and sometimes surprising happiness of a life spent in luminous understanding of his own blessings and shortcomings: "The days and nights wasted... Long hot afternoons / watching ants while the cicadas railed / in the Chinese elm about the brevity of life." Time slows down in these poems, as Gilbert creates an aura of curiosity and wonder at the fact of existence itself. Despite powerful intermittent griefs over the women he has parted from or the one lost to cancer (an experience he captures with intimate precision) — Gilbert's choice in this volume is to "refuse heaven." He prefers this life, with its struggle and alienation and delight, to any paradise. His work is both a rebellious assertion of the call to clarity and a profound affirmation of the world in all its aspects. It braces the reader in its humanity and heart.


RL

[tigereye]

7. I suspect I have heard this guy read here

I used to go to a lot of poetry readings when I was a Lit major and after....

[RetroLounge]

8. Yeah, I went to a lot also back then...

Maybe I should check them out again here...

:hi:

RL

[yvr girl]

2. That's a change of direction

It is true though - life is a hodgepodge of good and bad; joy and sorrow; light and darkness.

[RetroLounge]

4. Good morning

:hug:

RL

[yvr girl]

12. Let's make that good evening

:hug: :* :hug:

[AussieDave]

3. Very stark - it almost reads like "Desiderata"

but much more sombre.

[miss_american_pie]

5. That's lovely

Thank you. :hi:

[RetroLounge]

10. You are welcome!

:hi:

RL

[tigereye]

6. that is excellent and just what I need today

thanks, Retro, as usual.

I'm going to print that one out.

[RetroLounge]

13. It was perfect for me too...

I will keep looking for more contemporary stuff...

RL

[xchrom]

9. we do want to be here.

there's so much to this poem besides night and day -- light and dark.

yin and yang.

flies in our nostrils.

[SeattleGirl]

11. I love this one, RL

Makes me think of the guilt people (including me) can feel about finding delight in something while remembering that there is sorrow, poverty, starvation in the world. And then I think, well, if I do not allow myself delight, or joy, or happiness (my "battery rechargers"), then what good would I be to someone who needs my help? Plus, it does provide a contrast between the upside and the downside of life. Thanks much for this one.

:hi: :hug: