by Jack Gilbert

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.

Time slows down in these poems, as Gilbert creates an aura of curiosity and wonder at the fact of existence itself. Despite powerful intermittent griefs – over the women he has parted from or the one lost to cancer – Gilbert’s choice in this volume is to “refuse heaven.” He prefers this life, with its struggle, alienation and delight, to any paradise.