Refusing Heaven

Refusing Heaven
- Used Book in Good Condition
More than a decade after Jack Gilbertâ€™s The Great Fires, this highly anticipated new collection shows the continued development of a poet who has remained fierce in his avoidance of the beaten path. In Refusing Heaven, Gilbert writes compellingly about the commingled passion, loneliness, and sometimes surprising happiness of a life spent in luminous understanding of his own blessings and shortcomings: â€œThe days and nights wasted . . . Long hot afternoons / watching ants while the cicadas railed / in the Chinese elm about the brevity of life.â€ Time slows down in these poems, as Gilbert creates an aura of curiosity and wonder at the fact of existence itself. Despite powerful intermittent griefsâ€“over the women he has parted from or the one lost to cancer (an experience he captures with intimate precision)â€“Gilbertâ€™s choice in this volume is to â€œrefuse heaven.â€ He prefers this life, with its struggle and alienation and delight, to any paradise. His work is both a rebellious assertion of the call to clarity and a profound affirmation of the world in all its aspects. It braces the reader in its humanity and heart.
Country USA
Brand Knopf
Manufacturer Knopf
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2005-03-08
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781400043651

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