Published in 1994, “Tear It Down” by Jack Gilbert first appeared in his poetry collection The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992. Gilbert, though praised and awarded for his contributions to contemporary poetry, chose to exist outside the literary scene. He did not ascribe to any poetic movement, though in his early career, he engaged with poets of the Beat generation.

“Tear It Down” covers various overarching themes of the poet’s work: Love, marriage, and mortality. It stands as a prime example of the poems Gilbert tirelessly worked to create, focusing less on prescriptions of form and working instead on “finding the poem,” as he describes in a 1962 interview with his editor, Gordon Lish (Gilbert, Jack, and Gordon Lish. “Jack Gilbert, Interviewed by Gordon Lish, 1962 (from Issue One of Genesis West).” UNSAID, Unsaid Magazine, 20 Nov. 2012, unsaidmagazine.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/jack-gilbert-interviewed-by-gordon-lish-1962-from-issue-one-of-genesis-west-part-one/). Rich in imagery and connotative diction, “Tear It Down” insists the reader move beyond initial impressions for a more fully realized understanding of the world around them.

Poet Biography

Born in 1925 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jack Gilbert is a celebrated—yet elusive—lyrical poet. He attended the University of Pittsburgh and began writing poetry after meeting fellow poet Gerald Stern.

After graduating, Gilbert spent time abroad, working briefly in Paris before moving to Italy and meeting his first love, Gianna Gelmetti. His relationship with Gelmetti inspired many of his poems; however, the relationship did not last, and after a year together, Gilbert moved to San Francisco.

Gilbert studied at San Francisco State University, befriending beat poets Jack Spicer and Laura Ulewicz, the latter of whom heavily influenced his poetic style. His first collection of poetry, Views of Jeopardy (1962), won the Yale Younger Poets Prize and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Skirting the spotlight into which he had been thrust, Gilbert became somewhat reclusive after his first publication. Receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964, Gilbert and his partner—poet Linda Gregg—moved to Greece. The relationship lasted six years before they separated.

Gilbert periodically lived in Greece, Denmark, and England before moving to Japan in the 1970s and meeting his wife—sculptor Michiko Nogami. They were together 11 years before her death in 1982, when his second collection, Monolithos, was published.

After Nogami’s death, Gilbert returned to America again, moving between cities and intermittently publishing: His works include The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 (1994), Refusing Heaven (2005), and The Dance Most of All (2009).

Gilbert passed away in November 2012 at the age of 87 in Berkeley, California.

Poem Text

Gilbert, Jack. “Tear It Down.” 1994. Academy of American Poets.

Summary

The speaker, deliberately using the collective “we,” writes how people must dismantle their hearts in order to find “what / the heart knows” (Lines 1-2). The speaker prescribes this idea of deconstruction to the morning, marriage, and the stars. They write “by insisting on love we spoil it” (Line 5) and move “beyond” (Line 5) into a “mouth-deep” (Line 6) love.

The speaker continues, saying “going back toward childhood will not help” (Line 8) in this deconstruction. They explain that one place is not “better” (Line 9) than another, and only a thing itself can be more than what it is (namely Pittsburgh). Further, the speaker says, “Rome is better than Rome” (Line 11), just as the sounds made by racoons in the garbage is more than their moving in the garbage.

Shifting to a more insistent voice, the speaker declares “Love is not / enough. We die and are put into the earth forever” (Lines 14-15), urging that “We should insist while there is still time” (Line 16). In the final lines of the poem, the speaker explains how people can “eat through the wildness” (Line 17) of the body to “reach the body within the body” (Line 18).