Poetry Sunday

Jack Gilbert is an under-recognized poet. Maybe it is the accessibility of his poems that, ironically, pushes the great critical minds away. Gilbert’s strength is subtlety and observation, especially of the abstract. Jack Gilbert deftly describes emotions or concepts in just as detailed a fashion as a stone that he might be holding in his hand.

Photo by Robert Toby

A great example of this is his poem “The Great Fires,” which comes from a book of the same title.

The Great Fires
     by Jack Gilbert

Love is apart from all things.
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it.
It is not the body that finds love.
What leads us there is the body.
What is not love provokes it.
What is not love quenches it.
Love lays hold of everything we know.
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness
at first. Passion is clearly the path
but does not bring us to love.
It opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find the love which is
a mystery hidden there.
Love is one of many great fires.
Passion is a fire made of many woods,
each of which gives off its special odor
so we can know the many kinds
that are not love. Passion is the paper
and twigs that kindle the flames
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes
because it tries to be love.
Love is eaten away by appetite.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.

I post this at a time that I believe interpretation, as an ability we rely, is failing us, or rather, we are failing it. I’ll write more about that soon in a day or so.