You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblatt.

Today, my guest is Jack Gilbert,

the author most recently of a book of poetry

called The Great Fires, Poems,

1982 to 1992,

published by Alfred A. Knopf,

the book is coming out in paperback. Because it seems to me that the

resonances of these poems, their manner, is so much the product of life followed by gradual wisdom.

I want to hear four or five of them first,

and then we'll talk about them.

This is Jack Gilbert, reading five short poems

from The Great Fires.

Going Wrong.

The fish are dreadful.

They are brought up the mountain in the dawn most days,

beautiful and alien and cold from night under the sea, the grand rooms fading

from their flat eyes. Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks, washing them.

...