THE NUMBER OF SILENCE

Gilbert’s debut poetry collection renders political and other injustices in verse.

The author, a recently retired professor at the University of Denver, has lived a wide-ranging life, authoring five nonfiction books and teaching in Dharamsala, Paris, Liaoning, Concepción, etc. In his debut collection, Gilbert draws from his extraordinary life and family (according to his afterword, these include a leader of the Yiddish-speaking U.S. Anarchist movement and a Nobel Prize–winning biochemist). These spare poems are similarly wide-ranging. Some dwell on abstraction, like the titular “the number of silence,” which is delightfully evasive in its wordplay (“I am the mudslide of your mother said the river / I am where your mother met the road said the ashes”). Gilbert crafts images from diverse sources—Socrates, with his “words / afire”; a “Festival celebration / Bigpink tent,” honoring the Hindu god Ganesh; or the beauty of the Lha, the Dalai Lama’s residence in Dharamsala, India (“3 around the Lha”). The poet’s political commitments, however, serve as the collection’s organizing force. In “the world according to Netanyahu,” he writes of an Israeli man who cries “Hamas! Hamas!” but “cannot look / at the bleeding face… // of a single / child.” Other poems speak of solidarity between Tibetans and Indigenous people (“water protectors,” “solidarities I”), police violence against Black Americans (“say her name”), or the Pulse nightclub massacre in a country where “Couldbe / queers are hunted / could be / latinas are hunted / could be / youngandbeautifulalive / anddancing / muslims  are  hunted.” This commentary would benefit from clearer organization—the collection comprises six sections (“night sky,”“amerwords,”“gravity,” “caves,” “Er in ye s,” and “winter moon”), none of which have a clear structure or theme, and the work is lengthy at 300-plus pages. Gilbert stylizes his poetry with erratic spacing, which, at best, discombobulates the reader and, at worst, feels arbitrary.

Evocative, heartfelt, but sometimes-taxing poems.