Week 10: Jack Gilbert

Week 10: College Reading and Writing

Jack Gilbert: Annotating, Summarizing, Analyzing, Imitating

to annotate: to make notes on something to help you understand it better

to summarize: to put something in your own words

to analyze: to consider a question on the text, providing supporting examples from the text

to imitate: to create an original piece of writing based on something you have read

Exercise: Read and annotate

1. Read the poem out loud and underline any words you need to look up

2. Write any questions you have in the margins, the white space on the page

3. Put tricky parts into your own words in notes in the margins, the white space on the page

            I IMAGINE THE GODS

            Jack Gilbert

1           I imagine the gods saying, We will

            make it up to you.  We will give you

            three wishes, they say.  Let me see

            the squirrels again, I tell them.

            Let me eat some of the great hog

            stuffed and roasted on its giant spit

            and put out, steaming, into the winter

            of my neighborhood when I was usually

            too broke to afford even the hundred grams

10         I ate so happily walking up the cobbles,

            past the Street of the Moon

            and the Street of the Birdcage-Makers,

            the Street of Silence and the Street

            of the Little Pissing.  We can give you

            wisdom, they say in their rich voices.

            Let me go at last to Hugette, I say,

            the Algerian student with her huge eyes

            who timidly invited me into her room

            when I was too young and bewildered

20         that first year in Paris.

            Let me at least fail at my life.

            Think, they say patiently, we could

            make you famous again.  Let me fall

            in love one last time, I beg them.

            Teach me mortality, frighten me

            into the present.  Help me to find

            the heft of these days.  That the nights

28         will be full enough and my heart feral.

Exercise: Vocabulary: Use these words in your own original sentences. 

1. spit: a slender pointed rod for holding meat over a fire

2. gram: a metric unit of mass equal to ¹/₁₀₀₀ kilogram

3. cobble: cobblestone; a naturally rounded stone used in paving a street

4. wisdom: good sense

5. timidly adv. of timid: lacking in courage or self-confidence

6. bewildered: deeply confused

7. mortality: n. of mortal: able to die

8. heft: weight, heaviness

9. feral: like a wild beast

10. one more word of your choice that you look up!

Exercise: Questions for Comprehension

1. Why does he want his heart to be "feral"? What do you think a "feral" heart looks like, compared to a tame heart?  Write some examples of what people with tame and feral hearts do.

Exercise: Summarize the poem

Write a paragraph summarizing the poem with quotations, in-text citation, and a Work Cited Page

example summary, incorporating quotation and in-text citation:

Jack Gilbert's  poem "I Imagine the Gods" starts with Gilbert imagining the gods give him "three wishes" (line 3).  His ideas are all things from his past, at first, like eating some of the "great hog" he had when he was poor (Gilbert  line 5).  The gods suggest other wishes, like being "famous" or wise, but he concludes by thinking about his regrets, wanting them to help him recognize his own "mortality" and make his "heart feral" (Gilbert lines 19-28). 

Work Cited Page

Gilbert, Jack. "I Imagine the Gods" The Great Fires Poems, 1982-1992.. Knopf, 1996.

Exercise: Analysis

Question for analysis: Do you understand the speaker better than the gods do?  They don't understand why he doesn't want fame or wisdom; do you?  Use quotation and summary to support your answer. 

Exercise: Imitation

Write your own poem thinking about what you would wish for.  Would you want to be famous or wise, or go back to a memory, or both, or something else?