The Dance Most Of All: Poems (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
Jack Gilbert has already released a fine body of poetic work into the world. His talent is quiet and immense, and you still see in these poems the fleeting luminous measures of his life that he has so elegantly captured on paper. Some of these poems are quite good. But some, unfortunately, are not quite up to his usual high standard.They are all, of course, evocative. They are all sweetly nostalgic. They all aspire to transcendence, but only a few (The Danger of Wisdom, A Fact, Not Easily) succeed. But the collection as a whole is a bit too detached, too polite and exquisite. Poems of Ovid and Prospero and foreign climes. It is an absence of a sense of urgency, I think, that leaves me feeling an overall lack in this volume. The poems also, as a rule, fail to surprise the reader.The good ones are so wonderful that the read is still decidedly worthwhile. But they are fewer than in Gilbert's other books, and require more of a commitment to the search. Marvelously lyrical poems unexpected at Gilbert's age. He celebrates the women in his life, sometimes more as muses than individuals. I loved Elsewhere And Forever, Ovid in Tears, Winter Happiness in Greece, Living Hungry After, The New Bride Almost Visible in Latin, Searching For It in a Guadalajara Dance Hall and Feeling History. Gilbert's take on life, even when he is being elegiac is appreciative.
What do You think about The Dance Most Of All: Poems (2009)?
I'm reading it right now and it seems to be a great book
—peyton23232
