[New-Poetry] Christopher Gilbert

[Anny Ballardini]

It is a beautiful poem, thank you for sending it.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David Graham 
  To: NewPoetry & Views 
  Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 12:00 AM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] Christopher Gilbert


  A wonderful poet died this summer, and I don't think I've seen any notice of his death.  His name was Christopher Gilbert, and his one and only collection of poems appeared as part of the National Poetry Series in 1984, selected by Michael Harper.  The book's long out of print, but you still see it in the used bookstores occasionally:  *Across the Mutual Landscape*.  I highly recommend this book.


  I hadn't seen Chris in over 25 years, but I gather he'd had some really rough times before he died.  He wasn't yet 60 years old.  


  This Bridge Across

  A moment comes to me and 
  it's a lot like the dead 
  who get in the way sometimes
  hanging around, with their ranks

  growing bigger by the second

  and the game of tag they play

  claiming whoever happens by.

  I try to put them off

  but the space between us

  is like a country growing closer

  which has a language I know

  more and more of me is

  growing up inside of, and

  the clincher is the nothing

  for me to do inside here

  except to face my dead

  as the spirits they are,

  find the parts of me in them --
  call them back with my words.

  Ancestor worship or prayer?

  It's a kind of getting by--

  an extension of living

  beyond my self my people taught me,

  and each moment is a boundary

  I will throw this bridge across.

  --Christopher Gilbert.  Across the Mutual Landscape.  Graywolf Press, 1984.






  ========================================
  David Graham
  grahamd at ripon.edu


  Home Page:
  http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html


  Poetry Library:
  http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
  ==========================================








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