On November 11, at age 87, poet Jack Gilbert died following complications from pneumonia. For years, Gilbert had also reportedly suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. The New York Times described him as “a poet whose words transformed lives… [his work was] frank, forthright, emotionally fraught.” The Los Angeles Times, wrote, in observation of the release of his Collected Poems last March, “at Gilbert’s readings, audience members were known to burst into tears. Living and writing, though distinct for Gilbert, are never much separated.”

“Poetry, for me,” he wrote in an essay from 1965, “is a witnessing to magnitude.”

Gilbert arrived on the poetry scene in a big way in 1962 when we won the Yale Younger Poets Prize with his debut collection, Views of Jeopardy, which brought him a brief level of stardom most poets have never seen. His second book, published twenty years later, Monolithos, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His Collected Poems includes those first two books, and his three later collections, most recently The Dance Most of All published in 2009.

In his poem “A Brief for the Defense,” Gilbert wrote: “We must admit there will be music despite everything.”

Sources: The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times.

Here’s the announcement from Slate, which includes a recording of Gilbert reading some poems: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/11/13/jack_gilbert_dead_poet_was_87.html