"Orpheus in Greenwich Village", Orpheus returns
from Hades with his lyre only to find that his
listeners have no ears. Here we see the image of a
shaman who has suffered "soul-loss" himself
having been dispossessed. The message here is that
even the shaman can fail in his performance and
we are again reminded of “the wounded healer”.
Time, meticulousness and craft are Gilbert's
tools to convey his carefully constructed themes
which often deal with poetry itself. In "Tear it
down" Gilbert risks the ecstatic of shaman flight
when he states "we must unlearn the
constellations to see the stars". Here we see an
attempt to "raise consciousness" of the reader,
another aspect of the shaman. However,
ultimately the emotion of Gilbert's poetry is
sorrow as he says in "Rain"…"Suddenly this
defeat, this rain". This is again linked to Gilbert's
position "on the margins" like many other beat
poets. This marginal voice can sometimes rally
against order like Patchen. In "A brief for the
defence" his countercultural voice reaches its
zenith when he speaks out against the “ruthless
furnace of this world”. Here we see echoes of the
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