Gathered in this volume readers will find more than fifty years of poems by the
incomparable Jack Gilbert, from his Yale Younger Poets prize-winning volume to g
lorious late poems, including a section of previously uncollected work. There is
no one quite like Jack Gilbert in postwar American poetry. After garnering earl
y acclaim withViews of Jeopardy (1962), he escaped to Europe and lived apart fro
m the literary establishment, honing his uniquely fierce, declarative style, wit
h its surprising abundance of feeling. He reappeared in our midst with Monolitho
s (1982) and then went underground again until The Great Fires (1994), which was
eventually followed by Refusing Heaven (2005), a prizewinning volume of surpass
ing joy and sorrow, and the elegiac The Dance Most of All (2009).
