Jack Gilbert | The Sun Magazine

Jack Gilbert

Jack Gilbert authored five books of poetry before his death in November 2012 at the age of eighty-seven. “All Jack ever wanted to know,” says poet Linda Gregg, with whom he lived for many years, “was that he was awake — that the trees in bloom were almond trees — and to walk down the road to get breakfast. He never cared if he was poor or had to sleep on a park bench.”

— From July 2013
Poetry

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.

from “A Brief for the Defense”

July 2013
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