Author of Refusing Heaven.
Reading Jack Gilbert’s poems is giving me permission to write the way I write. I do not have to totally get out of who I have been as a poet. I just have to trust who I am. The way Rem Tanauan and Rofel Brion trusts themselves.
There is some semblance between Gilbert and Rofel. I can understand both. But Gilbert is also experimental and playful in some of his poems. In the poems that make sense, he delivers them like a photograph of moments. But what makes him distinct from everyone I read is his choice of moments. They are very existential.
So plain language plus existentialism. He has become philosophical without sounding philosophical. This is lyrical philosophy.