Monolithos
Monolithos, Poems 1962 and 1982 is the second book of poetry by American poet Jack Gilbert. It was nominated for all three major American book awards: the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the National Book Award. The same year "Monolithos" was published, Gilbert's partner Michiko Nogami died of cancer. Overview. Released by Alfred A. Knopf in a 1982 hardcover edition, "Monolithos" came twenty years after "Views of Jeopardy", which won Gilbert the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1962. A subsequent paperback edition of "Monolithos" was released by Graywolf Press in  1984. However, the limited availability of this edition has caused the book's value to climb from its original six-dollar publication price to amounts between $100 and $250, depending on the seller. The book is divided into two sections: "One - 1962" contains revised and collected poems from "Views of Jeopardy", while "Two [Monolithos] 1982" consists of new poems, written mainly on the Greek islands of Paros and Santorini. Gilbert stayed there with the poet Linda Gregg during their marriage. Of the title, Gilbert writes in the foreword, "Monolithos means "single stone", and refers to the small hill  behind our house which gave the place we lived its name. It is the tip of a non-igneous stone island buried in debris when most of Thira blew apart 3,500 years ago."