That the craft of poetry was as important to master American poet Jack Gilbert (1925-2012) as was its potential for storytelling, is made obvious through a little known publication in 1994. In that slight chapbook called Love – A Diptych, Gilbert and his former wife Linda Gregg (1942 – ) each wrote a poem that reflected on their relationship and eight year marriage during the 1960’s. Both versions of the poems published in 1994 are included in this post.
Throughout their careers Gilbert and Gregg have candidly written about each other during their marriage with startling frankness but always underlined with deep respect and lack of self pity. They remained great friends until Gilbert’s death last month. Hearing their individual viewpoints on their marriage provides an unusually intimate look inside the heart-break required even in the most longstanding marriage but is even more obvious in one like theirs that comes to a difficult end.
That Gregg and Gilbert could publish this chapbook together is noteworthy on its own but unexpectedly it also provides a bonus: an insight into Gilbert’s editing of his own work. Here is Gilbert’s poem from the chapbook. Such an honest admission about love coming to an end but also a celebration of that love no matter the final outcome. And what an engaging first, and unexpected, first line!
Winning, Failing and Flying
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
Like when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work, that she was
old enough to know better. It tempts me
to say that everything really worth doing
is worth doing badly. I boast inside
about how it was being with Linda there
by the perfect sea on our deserted side
of the island while the love was fading
out of her. The stars burned so extravagantly
those nights that anyone could tell
they would never last. She would be asleep
in my bed every morning like a visitation,
the gentleness in her like deer standing
in the dawn mist. I got to watch her
every afternoon coming through the hot
stony field after swimming, the Aegean
light behind her and the giant sky
on the other side of that. I listened to her
talk while we ate lunch. Dear God,
what a failure. Like getting old with that
alive inside me. The same people came back
from seeing Provence when it was still what
it used to be and said it was pretty but how
greasy the food was. I like to think
that Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.”
What a blessing it was to be with her
when she was changing clothes in that silence.
Jack Gilbert from Love – A Diptych, with Linda Gregg,, The Captain’s Bookshelf, Inc., 1994
Now here is a later version published in Gilbert’s 2005 volume- Refusing Heaven. The changes in the poem are highlighted in bold.. And notice in the new version how Gilbert has dropped the last two lines from the first version. Of note, this edited version was voted one of the best poems of those featured by The American Academy of Poets’ from their 2012 Poem-A-Day series published on-line.
Failing and Flying
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work, that she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe that Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.”
Jack Gilbert from Refusing Heaven, Alfred A. Knopf, 2005
There is nothing dramatic in this editing. But it improves the poem. Tightens it up. The change that makes the biggest difference for me in the removal of last two lines. With them gone in the second version we can absorb and appreciate much more the power of his statement:
I believe that Icarus was not failing as he fell
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
Having experienced the painful end of two marriages this poem helps me view them differently. I no longer say my marriages failed. I say they ended. Because to say they failed ignores their richly rewarding and wonderful moments; the heart-breaking hope we had when the marriages began with no sense of their end outside of death. To overlook the great moments somehow denies what Gilbert calls the triumph – that once there was an abiding married love between me and my two former wives. In this context it is instructive to see that Gilbert deleted these words in his revised version: Dear God,/ what a failure.
To read Gilbert’s poem, either version, alongside Gregg’s provides an additional richness to both poems. Here is Gregg’s published in their 1994 chapbook.
ALONE WITH THE GODDESS
The young men ride their horses fast
on the wet sand of Parangtritis.
Back and forth, with the water sliding
up to them and away.
This is the sea where the goddess lives,
angry, her lover taken away.
Don’t wear red, don’t wear green here,
the people say. Do not swim in the sea.
Give her an offering,
I give a coconut to protect
the man I love. The water pushes it back.
I wade out and throw it farther.
“The goddess does not accept your gift,”
an old woman says.
I say perhaps she likes me
and we are playing a game.
The old woman is silent,
the horses wear blinders of cloth,
the young men exalt in their bodies,
not seeing right or left, pretending
to be brave. Sliding on and off
their beautiful horses
on the wet beach at Parangtritis.
Linda Gregg from All of it Singing, Graywolf, 2008
What a foreshadowing Gregg gives us here. And like Gilbert she adds a mythic reference which take both poems out of the strictly personal realm and place them inside a greater context which adds such impact. But in addition Gregg adds the striking image of the young men riding their horses back and forth on the beach. And she bookends the poem with this image at the start and end.. This too adds a mythic feel to the poem. Frozen in a moment this image could be right out of a sculpted stone relief from ancient Greece.
I am grateful for the courage and craft of these two fine American poets; that they translated their love for each other into poetry that transcends the merely personal.