My new computer doesn't allow me to use "preview." This is my third attempt to get the Thurs OPP in correct format. If I'm unsuccessful once again, please ignore the jammed-together title and first line.

FAILING AND FLYING by Jack Gilbert

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.

Hi MA,

I've just re-read this and upon second read, it feels more poetic than it did to me first time around. Actually, the only thing i'd actually critique in this poem is the title, which is rarely the case for me. I find it too blatant and/or pedestrian. Maybe it set me up, first read, to also find the poem a tad much on the 'prosy' side, feeling a bit aphoristic or something, with twinges of nice poetic touches, but now i'm feeling those poetic touches rise in proportion or significance upon second read enough that i am not put off by whatever prosiness still lingers.

Even so, I am reacting to this poem, still, more as philosophy than as poetry, and quite a nice philosophic point it has to make, I believe. Nicely un-obscure, nicely reperspectivizing Icarus ... and his progeny (the lot of us) ... "...anything / worth doing is worth doing badly" gives particular resonant pause for reflection. I suppose the poem could be simplistically summed as "glass half full to supplant a mythic foregrounding of glass half empty" but it feels like more than that.

It's nice.

Though I like the idea being expressed here very much: sort of turning over the half empty glass so it becomes half full---to use Zinya's paraphrasing---I think the language is dull and a bit lazy. The metaphors are a mix of the mundane (greasy food) and the overblown (elk in the mist) and don't really work for me. The mid poem hinge "anything worth doing is worth doing badly" though it echos the recasting of Icarus, is still kind of a cliche.

I think this poem works best if you don't think too much about it. Icarus's failing wasn't that he fell, but that he failed to listen to the warning to not fly too close to the sun. I suppose you could work that idea into this poem, but it doesn't seem like he was pushing the metaphor in that direction.

I'm also turned off a bit cause their isn't much room for the reader in this poem. There is little speculation or active thinking here: there is a clever idea, but not much else. If you recduced the poem to the first line and the last two lines I'm not sure you would lose much.

From Slate:

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Good selection Mary Ann..

People have to be reminded about the 'memory as revisionist.' Gilbert does an excellent job about putting time, memory and love in perspective..that before the end, Icarus flew and that his flying experience may have been marvelous ..until..his ending.

It is that exhilerating/memorable experience in love, touch and relationship that should not be forgotten after the fact. So many of us prefer to remember what went sour in a relationship, in marriage and remake 'their story' so that a negative outcome was fated all along.

Gilbert is faithful to all of life in this poem, in his poetry..preserving the beauty that came before the disappointments and change. Yes, it is a poem.
A

One of my many chinks, dints, rusts, and just plain damn gristle-headedness is that of not having the wonted appreciation of the confessional poem. Not to say that such poems do not have a lot to offer, because they certainly do on a great many levels. Maby its a male thing (like wearing one's best halo into the next swamp thinking its the Hellespont), too much to ask of the ego, among a host of other considerations - whatever the misreasons are, I have a difficult time with confessional stuff. Have been reading the complete poems of Anne Sexton - lotsa goodies in there, but has gotten so wearing that I doubt to finish reading the whole book. To my mind, the confessional starts-out in the middle of wearing; if such a poem snags me with a something, I do read the whole poem 2-3 times hoping to disable the brakes on my ignorance, but it is a chore for me.

Gilbert's F&F is a confessional poem by misdirection - he does not beat us over the whatevers with overt sledges of me, myself, and I. This elevates the poem somewhat so that common experiences come through solidly on their own fours. Not an unworthy poem by any means, just difficult for me to relate to.

Think of Falstaff - he could excuse, validate, or dismiss whatever caught him with his hose down. Yes, Icarus also flew, on wings stuck (think about it) together by a composite of eye and ear wax. He shoulda knowed better. His daddy shoulda knowed better. We shalled have knowed better, but the child in us will be alive until we ourselves are void of such waxen things.

"...the end of his triumph." almost too excellent a line to be in this particular poem, therefore a point of saving grace, one on which many worthwhile considerations could be extended by each of us toward, hopefully, a harvest of counterpoint between ourselves and the at large. Our internal counterpoints are a whole other matter. Confessional poem stuff. I'll just stand in the back of the room.

Carpe Verve, all.

Standing knee deep in romance rubble, a fellow either thinks he should, in the future, be more attuned to his always-accurate interior portents, or he insists he never saw those dozen red flags and the bombs bursting in air.

Is there any sensible conclusion between "I shoulda known better" and "What the Flying F*** Was That?"

Still, I would have appreciated more Icarus, much less burning stars and misty antelope. Also, I'm put off by this:
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation,
Looking back the narrator sees the impermanence by calling her presence a visitation, but any lover (presumably a husband as the first lines mention marriage) who refers to the bed in which his beloved sleeps every morning as "my bed" maybe writes his own ticket to BreakUpsVille.

This conjures an apocalyptic image, not entirely out of place-- something like the movie poster scene from I Am Legend:
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.

While I blue ribbon these lines as 'best in poem'
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph
they bring to mind an adage companion, to wit: it wasn't the fall that killed him, but the landing. The landing of Jack Gilbert's FAILING AND FLYING was fine. It really was the fall that killed it.

Hi, MaryAnn, I liked this on first reading, mainly for the quirky and perhaps less-than-logical idea that Icarus was successful. I suppose it all hinges on how one defines success. Does there need to be a certain ratio of success to failure to qualify? I'd say if we are ranking moves as the Olympic judges do, death has got to drop the final score quite a bit.

I liked how Icarus's success/failure becomes an analogy for a marriage. There's actually a lot of truth in this attitude the narrator takes -- a failed marriage doesn't necessarily mean there was never anything good about it. On the other hand, I sense quite a bit of wry humor in a comparison of a failed marriage with a, like, total crash and burn situation. After all, Icarus didn't just suffer a slight singe.

Another thing Gilbert pulls off pretty well is the alliteration in the final lines, not just with "failing as he fell," but also "triumph." It all ties back nicely into the title:

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

I'd say if we are ranking moves as the Olympic judges do, death has got to drop the final score quite a bit.

Funny!

Hi, zinya,

I agree with you on the title. In fact, I kept wanting to call it "Falling and Failing," simply because I was attracted to the strong similarity between the two words.

Your point re is it a poem or is a philosophic statement was a good one, too.

Do you think the description of the woman returning from the beach with the wide sky and water behind her was meant to silhouette her much as Icarus might have been silhouetted as he flew toward the sun?

Hi, waltz, I was all ready to jump on the bandwagon, bashing the insensitive male for calling the bed "my bed," when I realized that if a couple were staying at the beach in a small cabin, they might each have a single bed. Whatdaya think?

When one's involved so deeply that Icarus is the metaphor for breakup, I think it better be mi cama, su cama.

Unless you're Ricky and Lucy. Then you'd better keep one foot on the floor.

I like your question to Zinya about the dramatic back lighting conjuring images of Icarus. And here I was thinking Will Smith. But can you see the similarities? <link>
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to wnc and IT,

i confess (my excuse might be it was too early still :-) that I didn't react to "my bed" - in part perhaps cuz i wasn't really awake yet ... but in part too because I think by the time we get to that line, we know the "love is fading out of her" - and that the opening reference to marriage a la Icarus is his own marriage faded away ... such that I think it's a sign of their bed becoming that of two individuals rather than one couple ... Perhaps the "my" slipped in in allusion to that. ?? Or perhaps, as you suggest, the "my" was causal rather than effect-ual ... I am surprised i hadn't noticed it, you're right to question where that came from ... Both of you have raised interesting adjunct possibilities - the idea of his silhouetting of her is an intriguing parallel.

What i notice is that (at least by the time we pick up their story in the narrator's retrospective) he seems to observe her with something akin to awe - beholding her ... There's a sense (imho) that she was beheld more than held ... but, if that be the case, then he's here to praise (awed) beholding as being 'good while it lasted' ... but that conveys something of a feeling of distance (emotional distance - e,g, 'listening to her" at lunch - is he so rapt or awed he only listens?) -- curiously the opposite problem Icarus had - which was too much "closeness" ...

(enjoyed - as always - your wit as well)

The poet Jack Gilbert is well-known (notorious?) for writing somewhat sentimental poems about each of his two wives, the poet Linda Gregg and the sculptor Michiko ___ (can’t remember her last name). In fact, I think august read one of Gilbert’s poems when he married Mrs. august, but I don’t know which one.

What OneArt says is true – Icarus’s fault was that he didn’t listen to his father’s warnings, but the reason he didn’t is because he was attracted by the risk and beauty of the sun. So also, it sounds like the marriage in this poem was risky – people told them it would never work, etc. (The poem is about his marriage to Linda Gregg, whom he met when she was a student in one of his classes. They lived on a Greek island for several years,) But after all these years, Gilbert still feels their love (and love in general) is a kind of divine thing, as illustrated by his use of “visitation” to describe his wife’s coming to his bed. (Doesn’t it sound like by now they’re spending most nights in separate beds?) I don’t know about you, but I’d love to have this phrase said about me decades later by an ex-husband –

the gentleness in her / like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

I also like his other memories – the sight of her coming back from the beach, the sound of her talking at lunch. But like some of you, I sure don’t like the lines about boorish visitors to Provence remembering the greasy food as much as the place’s beauty – it just seems out of place (although being compared to Provence is not bad either).

I’m not crazy about

But anything / worth doing is worth doing badly.

But it’s better than what I could come up with –

Anything worth doing is ….. worth doing.

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I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

I do like those lines – even more so now that islandtime has reminded me of the F sounds in the title and in failing, fell and triumph. In fact, I like the way the word “triumph” seems to come to an abrupt end just like Icarus hitting the ground.

The whole poem reminds me of something I read several years ago. It went something like this – promise me that if we divorce, you will remember the reason you married me. Or something like that.

This isn’t my favorite Gilbert poem, but I like its theme and its accessibility.

My favorite Gilbert poem is this, which I have posted here before --

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If this post sounds disjointed, it’s because I’m trying to listen to the speeches at the Dem convention as I type. Thanks to all who responded. Now off to the TV.

MA

from Z: beheld more than held .... curiously the opposite problem Icarus had - which was too much "closeness" ...

ahh, yes.

"any lover who refers to the bed in which his beloved sleeps every morning as "my bed" maybe writes his own ticket to BreakUpsVille."

Hello w&c -

Our hero confesses to running around at night on the other side of the island where the stars are (Paris Hilton?), to failing to take a swim with his ex, and to sole ownership of the bed. And he compares his beloved to an antelope. Instead of flying too close to the sun, I believe he flew too close to stupid.

Enjoy the holiday weekend.