Dundee can't remember her name. It's not as though I've been in bed with that many women. The truth is I can't even rememberer face. I kind of know how stronger thighs were, and her beauty. But what I won't forgets the way she tore open the barbecued chicken with her hands, and wiped the grease on her breasts.

— Jack Gilbert

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.

— Jack Gilbert

I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.

— Jack Gilbert

I had lived all of my youthful dreams, but I couldn't think of many adult ones. I finally realized that we don't have many dreams for adults because, historically, people have always died much younger than they do today.

— Jack Gilbert

I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me nowise a beginning or an end.

— Jack Gilbert

Imagine if suffering were real. Imagine if those old people were afraid of death. What if the midget or the girl with one arm really felt pain? Imagine how impossible it would bet olive if some people were alone and afraid all their lives.

— Jack Gilbert

It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It’s why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won’t notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image.

— Jack Gilbert

I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with my mouth against the tiny ear and throw him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up. The only way to leave even the smallest trace. So that all his life her son would feel gladness unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined city of steel in America. Each time almost remembering something maybe important that got lost.

— Jack Gilbert

Michael Noemi (1946–1982)” Is she more apparent because she is not anymore forever? Is her whiteness more white because she was the color of pale honey? A smokestack making the sky more visible. A dead woman filling the whole world. Michikosaid, “The roses you gave me kept me awake with the sound of their petals falling.

— Jack Gilbert

Once she said the world was an astonishing animal: light was its spirit and noise was its mind. That it was composed to feed on honor, but did not.

— Jack Gilbert