Views of Jeopardy

In an essay on his own work in New American Poets of the Golden Gate, Jack Gilbert writes that “I am by nature drawn to exigence, compression, selection…one of the special pleasures in poetry for me is accomplishing a lot with the least means possible.” Gilbert’s poetry is distinguished by sparse lyricism, forthright clarity of tone, and controlled emotion regarding everyday life and relationships. In his foreword to Views of Jeopardy, Fitts identifies the origins of this approach, calling Gilbert’s “abrupt hard mode of expression” the result of preoccupation with "alienation from one's kind, the painful throwing back of the artist upon himself, the compulsive elaboration of the details of a personal myth.”