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| Joy Harjo, Bob Hass & Linda Gregg |
I met Linda Gregg backstage at the Watershed Poetry Festival in Berkeley in September—Bob Hass said, Maureen, do you know Linda Gregg?
And my jaw hit the floor.
I told her about an after-school softball game I watched at Lagunitas School—the Gregg twins were on 2nd & 3rd base, Billy Joe Bianchi hit a home run and when they ran, they were so freckled and golden, I was in awe.
Someone was up at bat. Maybe it was Liz Haas. Or one of the Farley boys. I remembered them from catechism class. I think it was Lagunitas vs. Nicasio. It was a foul ball that rolled right down the third base line and turned out at the last minute, so everyone had to retrace their steps.
I was about 6 or 7, so baseball was a mystery to me—but Billy Joe was my neighbor (family friends). So, I watched the game and cheered as he brought them all home.
Linda was a little blown away by the baseball story—expecting something more modern, perhaps—her role as a major poet and me as sycophant—instead it was about a childhood softball game.
As it turned out, her sister was in the audience, too. So I got to meet the Gregg twins together again. I always want to call her Alma, but that's the name of Linda's seminal poetry book—if women can have a seminal books, that is. But perhaps her sister was Linda's Alma. Louise lives in Tomales. The weather has taken its toll on her. She favors the same plaid shirts as did her father. Tough no-nonsense women, the Gregg twins.
Linda had just come from seeing Jack Gilbert. She said that he wasn't doing well. His mind may have taken flight. But he always knew her. A bond that deep.
I'm racking the brain as to how the story is possible as they are 10 years older than me but Lagunitas was such a small place in those days and I started school early—perhaps they also started school late, to make the timeline work.
Or, they were already in high school. I remember someone saying they were 8th graders—and that seemed like such an impossible distance in time, I couldn't fathom it. Maybe Carol Manning remembers it better.
ENVOI
The apocryphal story goes that in a few years' time Linda would meet Jack Gilbert in a poetry class at SFSU, and bring her poetry teacher home to meet the family at Forest Farm Camp on Tamal Road. While I was riding my horse through the camp, her plaid-shirted father would ridicule him for being a sissy poet, and he'd climb a big doug fir with a chainsaw to prove that he too was a man, and the tree would split wrong, and he would fall to earth, a broken Icarus. It sealed their fate—they were forever bound to one another, they rode off to Greece on his chariot of chrome. It would become the stuff of legends.
As I was writing this bloggy-bit, I saw a Facebook post from Jim Carmin: " So sad to hear from Sam Hamill that Jack Gilbert has died this morning..."
Still trying to confirm if it's true via Sam Hamill but meanwhile I have to go to work.
So it is true: The Academy of American Poets With heavy hearts we share the news that we've just learned from Alfred A. Knopf. The great poet Jack Gilbert has died at age 87.About the poet: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/
RIP Jack, the bases are loaded and it's the top of the ninth.
Failing and Flying
LA Times article
Poet Jack Gilbert's time of triumph and loss
Though his brain has been diminished by disease, his 'Collected Poems,' released this year, reminds us of the writer's high place in American poetry.
And my jaw hit the floor.
I told her about an after-school softball game I watched at Lagunitas School—the Gregg twins were on 2nd & 3rd base, Billy Joe Bianchi hit a home run and when they ran, they were so freckled and golden, I was in awe.
Someone was up at bat. Maybe it was Liz Haas. Or one of the Farley boys. I remembered them from catechism class. I think it was Lagunitas vs. Nicasio. It was a foul ball that rolled right down the third base line and turned out at the last minute, so everyone had to retrace their steps.
I was about 6 or 7, so baseball was a mystery to me—but Billy Joe was my neighbor (family friends). So, I watched the game and cheered as he brought them all home.
Linda was a little blown away by the baseball story—expecting something more modern, perhaps—her role as a major poet and me as sycophant—instead it was about a childhood softball game.
As it turned out, her sister was in the audience, too. So I got to meet the Gregg twins together again. I always want to call her Alma, but that's the name of Linda's seminal poetry book—if women can have a seminal books, that is. But perhaps her sister was Linda's Alma. Louise lives in Tomales. The weather has taken its toll on her. She favors the same plaid shirts as did her father. Tough no-nonsense women, the Gregg twins.
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| Linda & Louise Gregg |
Linda had just come from seeing Jack Gilbert. She said that he wasn't doing well. His mind may have taken flight. But he always knew her. A bond that deep.
I'm racking the brain as to how the story is possible as they are 10 years older than me but Lagunitas was such a small place in those days and I started school early—perhaps they also started school late, to make the timeline work.
Or, they were already in high school. I remember someone saying they were 8th graders—and that seemed like such an impossible distance in time, I couldn't fathom it. Maybe Carol Manning remembers it better.
ENVOI
The apocryphal story goes that in a few years' time Linda would meet Jack Gilbert in a poetry class at SFSU, and bring her poetry teacher home to meet the family at Forest Farm Camp on Tamal Road. While I was riding my horse through the camp, her plaid-shirted father would ridicule him for being a sissy poet, and he'd climb a big doug fir with a chainsaw to prove that he too was a man, and the tree would split wrong, and he would fall to earth, a broken Icarus. It sealed their fate—they were forever bound to one another, they rode off to Greece on his chariot of chrome. It would become the stuff of legends.
As I was writing this bloggy-bit, I saw a Facebook post from Jim Carmin: " So sad to hear from Sam Hamill that Jack Gilbert has died this morning..."
Still trying to confirm if it's true via Sam Hamill but meanwhile I have to go to work.
So it is true: The Academy of American Poets With heavy hearts we share the news that we've just learned from Alfred A. Knopf. The great poet Jack Gilbert has died at age 87.About the poet: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/
RIP Jack, the bases are loaded and it's the top of the ninth.
Failing and Flying
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
Jack Gilbert |
LA Times article
Poet Jack Gilbert's time of triumph and loss
Though his brain has been diminished by disease, his 'Collected Poems,' released this year, reminds us of the writer's high place in American poetry.
www.nytimes.com
Jack Gilbert - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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