Rediscovering the Recluse

Posting may be light(er) for awhile as I look into some side work... you know, sweeping, baby-sitting, telemarketing, clubbing baby seals, etc. But I was enthused to see this article in Slate about Jack Gilbert, an oddity among Beat-era poets whom I had the pleasure of meeting when he taught at my MFA program in Spokane, WA. I was a Fiction Man, and we had no truck with Poetry Men normally, but everyone had to take one workshop out of their discipline, and I figured, hey, famous poet guy, might as well. Gilbert was in his early seventies then, thin and wispy-haired, but wiry and vibrant and scary like an ancient karate master. Which is sort of what he was, and is. He's a goatish monk, if that makes any sense, and the Slate pieces explains his lifelong conflict between asceticism and pleasure.

Three incidents stand out from Gilbert's months in Spokane. First was at a party, where he was magnetically drawn to a tall, statuesque, blonde student. She was visibly flattered by the attention of this eminence grise, and probably a bit flirtatious... I mean, Gilbert seemed perpetually hornier at 71 than I remember being at 17. He chatted with the girl and her nominal boyfriend, but he always turned the conversation back to their relationship, specifically concrete physical details (though nothing overtly naughty). At some point they were discussing hair, and the boyfriend commented how the girl's hair was so long that sometimes of an evening, he would sit behind her and brush it out. Gilbert rocked back on his heels and squinted, exhaling, "Ahhhhhh, that's nice. Sooo nice." He fairly gleamed with lust. He was so randy, it was cute. Even the boyfriend couldn't bring himself to resent it.

The second memorable occurrence with Gilbert involved me almost accidentally killing him. I drove a moderately dented Chevy Cavalier at the time, and a small fender-bender had damaged the back right door such that you had to really yank (if outside) or push (if in) to get it open. After class one night, I was driving various students plus Gilbert to our respective homes, as we all lived in the same neighborhood. The calculus of the dropoffs worked out such that Gilbert, sitting back right, was the last in the car, creating an odd chauffeur-passenger dynamic between the two of us. But when I stopped in front of his apartment, Gilbert couldn't open his door. I started to get out to come help, which must have really set off his self-reliance instincts (he wasn't feeble, just 71), because he threw his body hard against the door. The door popped open and Gilbert popped out into a snowbank. I gasped, because that snowbank topped a very steep hill that terminated in the rushing, freezing Spokane River. This would be difficult to explain to the university. Fortunately, Gilbert was just stuck in the snow, and had extricated himself by the time I rushed around. He brushed off his coat, gave me a look that was half amused and half accusing, then stomped away.

The last bit is my favorite. Because Gilbert was such a big deal, his one class was packed, and there were several Fiction People like myself on poetry safari. One woman in particular was perhaps the most clueless, gratingly pretentious person I've ever met. We'll call her "Daria" for the sake of a slight joke and to (hopefully) prevent her from tracking me down for castration. Daria was a walkin' talkin' writin'-school stereotype, with a vital though abjectly superficial passion for all possible political and social causes. Humorless, didactic, accusatory, the works. Her writing was almost unendurable, but far worse were her droning and irrelevant monologues when it was her turn to comment on other students' work. During the poetry class, another student submitted a nice and fairly standard sex poem involving some boisterous rolling around in the woods, with crushed brambles and underbrush scratching up the naked bodies of the enthusiastic lovers. Daria held forth on how she saw this as a poem about nature striking back at mankind for despoiling the earth, turning against violent and destructive humans by scratching their naked bodies, etc. The poet in question was obviously appalled, and everyone else in the class (me included) was bored to tears as usual. Normally, the instructors tried to gently deflect and defuse Daria's tirades in some faintly constructive manner before moving on. Gilbert, however, was watching Daria attentively throughout her speech. When she finished, there was a pause while we waited to hear how Gilbert sidelined her. But instead of a diplomatic approach, Gilbert leaned toward Daria and declared, "You're a FREAK."

That was all he said about Daria's critique. It was beautiful. And in tribute, here's a link to my favorite Gilbert poem, "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart." Read it. His new book is Refusing Heaven. Buy it. 

Comments

[sac]

HA!! That is fucking fantastic. It must be nice to be old and semi-famous enough to not give a shit. I would have loved to say that to some of my former classmates and students.

[Dave R]

"The second memorable occurrence with Gilbert involved me almost accidentally killing him." Brilliant :)

[chris m]

He really didn't seem to give much of a shit about anything... he operated essentially as a nomad, going from college to college every few months and holding court. I don't think he owned anything other than a medium-sized suitcase of clothes. As for killing him, who was I kidding? The guy's indestructible.

[JMH]

          Indestructible, eh? Let him get caught in bed with a student, then we'll see what campuses will have him! The taint of scandal has destroyed many careers...

JH

[chris m]

I really doubt he would care ... like I said, he seemed intent on a nomadic lifestyle. And it would really surprise me if he hadn't slept with his students. Those Beats were a randy bunch. I actually forgot one other little anecdote: Gilbert once told a small group of us that he wrote a novel once and let a friend of his publish it under the friend's name. He said he had no interest in fiction and just did it as a favor. I tried to get the name from him a couple times, but he never fessed up. Though he did chuckle when I asked if it was Kurt Vonnegut.

[ga]

Zzz Zzzzzzz was her name. I say again, ZZZ ZZZZZZZ.
Granted, this was a name she'd cobbled together for herself out of some tribal something or other (she was nominally American Indian) and her mother's maiden name.

[chris m]

OK, I know it was a punk move to edit your comment above, GA, but you just know she googles herself, and she's just insane enough to come after me with a lawsuit or a Navajo curse, and I don't need either one of those ...