Monolithos

This is Jack Gilbert's first book since the now-legendary Views of Jeopardy appeared as the 1962 entry in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Beat poetry was much in vogue at the time, a discursive poetry that rages against things as they are. Perhaps it was for this reason the strict compression of Jack Gilbert's work and its celebration of an ideal of romantic love caused such a sensation. The Times declared him "one of the most exciting voices of the second half of our centruy." Standley Kunitz called him "a civilization and an artist." There was praise from other notable poets—Stephen Spender, Muriel Rukeyser, and Theodore Roethke among them—such considerable praise that a nationwide tour was arranged. Gilbert set aside his solitary life abroad and returned to the United States to speak to the audience that now awaited him, so arousing those who came to hear him that only the readings offered by Dylan Thomas a decade earlier might be seen in the same...