Jack Gilbert, Fall 2008
BY Julio Granda

If there wasn’t such a struggle would the poetry be worth it?

If it was easy it would be less. It was wonderful to find what I was looking for. If it is easy, it doesn’t interest me. It isn’t easy if you are writing beyond yourself. I knew what I wanted to say but it was hard to get it to say what I wanted. To be alive was very hard. It was always easy to write but it was always difficult to get to the point beyond. I was always reaching.

In the body of your work you often mention Pittsburgh and growing up in Pittsburgh, but these seem more points of reference for other things you say in those poems. The poem in the new book, “Neglecting the Kids,” however, seems wholly autobiographic, almost confessional…

It is autobiographical. It’s exactly what happened and it is so strong it was hard to handle it in any other way than in a poem. It’s easy to lie to yourself. But if it’s easy, I’m not interested. I was always trying to get beyond. Is it sometimes too hard? Sometimes it almost killed me, the struggle to find what I was saying. It was almost always easy until I tried to find what I was. If it’s easy, I don’t trust it. It can be a nice poem but for me I want to get beyond that.

What is there beyond a nice poem?

Deeper. It’s easy to write a poem. It’s hard to write beyond that.

The poem, “A Fact,” is set in Greece. Was using a Greek-root word, such as meniscus, part of this struggle?

I don’t trust easy poems. The word “meniscus” in the poem —getting that one word correct was part of the struggle. It’s not just the effort. It’s finding the right thing to say. A lot of times hard work doesn’t solve it. But the struggle leads to happiness when it comes out, finally, right. And finding the better thing I had overlooked by going deeper.

Gary Metras and Jack Gilbert, Fall 2008
BY Julio Granda

How should memory function for the artist, the poet?

It’s largely what you get back from life, from all your efforts. It’s in the things you gave to your life.

In “Not Easily” you have this beautifully sad declaration: “We can swim in the Aegean/but we can’t take it home.” (Jack smiles broadly and shakes his head once in approval as I read the line.) How is memory related to joy, and joy related to sadness in this poem?

You get used to it, the sadness. But my poetry, my life was also a gift. Not for pride, but for surviving. That’s a lot.

Some people seem to have a natural talent for baseball or basketball or the violin. They seem to play by instinct. Do you write poetry by instinct? Are you a poet by instinct?

I think both instinct and practice. Both living it and being alive with it. I read a lot but the poetry is almost always that thing. For me it was so natural.

When you look back at your previous work, say, The Great Fires, how do you feel about it?

I don’t look at them. But it makes me happy that the poems are there. There is sort of an accumulated sense of satisfaction, but that’s what I had expected. Easy success is not very pleasing. It’s nice, but not very exciting.

In “The Secret,” you say, “Irregularity is the secret/of music and the voice of great poetry.”This poem has 15 lines so it is sort of an irregular sonnet. And the new book contains 49 poems, a bit irregular in itself. Were these conscious choices? What else do you mean by “irregularity”?

I like that line. I don’t know about the consciousness. But I did this all my life. The irregular. Perfection is dangerous. The difference is what there is in the poem, in the life. I think the most striking success is like that, the irregular. I didn’t plan the number of lines. It just happened. And the number of poems? Who knows?

Do you have another book in you?

I wonder. I wonder. I don’t know if I will. It’s easy to give up. I trust in the fact that I can write well. When I’m working a poem, I’m almost always focused on that one.