Quotes by Jack Gilbert

“As you get a little older, you see the world a little differently and you realize that education is really the thing that can solve a lot of our problems.”

“The university is at a critical stage in its development and we want to help it along. We hope to encourage others to give.”

“Sorrow everywhere,”

“Besides, I didnt have grandchildren in high school,”

“Were Just Like You ... Really!”

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

I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end.

We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must havethe stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthlessfurnace of this world. To make injustice the onlymeasure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

The heart is a foreign country whose language none of us is good at.

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question The bravery. Say its not courage. Call it a passion. Would say courage isnt that. Not at its best. It was impossib1e, and with form. They rode in sunlight, Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal. Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches. The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment. It is too near the whores heart: the bounty of impulse, And the failure to sustain even small kindness. Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being. Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality. Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh. Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope. The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo. The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding. Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage, Not the months rapture. Not the exception. The beauty That is of many days. Steady and clear. It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

DuendeI cant remember her name.Its not as though Ive been in bedwith that many women.The truth is I cant even rememberher face. I kind of know how strongher thighs were, and her beauty.But what I wont forgetis the way she tore openthe barbecued chicken with her hands,and wiped the grease on her breasts.

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

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.

Once she said the world was an astonishing animal: light was its spirit and noise was its mind. That it was composed to feed on honor, but did not.

Michiko Nogami (1946—1982)” Is she more apparent because she is notanymore forever? Is her whiteness more whitebecause she was the color of pale honey?A smokestack making the sky more visible.A dead woman filling the whole world. Michikosaid, “The roses you gave me kept me awakewith the sound of their petals falling.

Suddenly this defeat.This rain.The blues gone grayAnd the browns gone grayAnd yellowA terrible amber.In the cold streetsYour warm body.In whatever roomYour warm body.Among all the peopleYour absenceThe people who are alwaysNot you.I have been easy with treesToo long.Too familiar with mountains.Joy has been a habit.NowSuddenlyThis rain.

It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It’s why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won’t notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image.

We are a singularity that makes music out of noise because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.

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