Belongings: Poems

by Sandra M. Gilbert

An ambitious, intricately wrought corona of sonnets ponders the nature of belonging in every sense of the word. Belongings as possessions, as the history and furnishings of a life, and as the places in which life itself happens are the preoccupations at the heart of this affecting collection. Moving from memories of a childhood apartment to mourning for the poet's mother, Belongings explores the question: "Where, how, and to what do you belong?

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Sandra M. Gilbert was an American literary critic and poet who published in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism. She was best known for her collaborative critical work with Susan Gubar, with whom she co-authored, among other works, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). Madwoman in the Attic is widely recognized as a text central to second-wave feminism. She was Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis.
Gilbert lived in Berkeley, California, and lived, until 2008, in Paris, France. Her husband, Elliot L. Gilbert, was chair of the Department of English at University of California, Davis, until his death in 1991. She also had a long-term relationship with David Gale, mathematician at University of California, Berkeley, until his death in 2008.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost Buddhist in vision - what belongs to us and the thread that runs through our collective existence - beautiful. The question of why we are here is one that many poets have looked at; it is a question (in my opinion) that will never be answered. But that does not mean we have to stop trying to find answers - even if only questions replace them.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gilbert, of The Madwoman in the Attic fame, apparently is also a poet. And not a bad poet, I might add, although she does some things in her poems that irk me.

Like incorporating the title into almost every poem, which would be fine in a couple of poems but gets tedious the more often it happens. Funnily enough, even though sometimes alliteration, when used too frequently, can cause poems to feel too manufactured, I didn't mind how often she used it in her poems, maybe because her lines mainly are so short and tight. Also, lack of punctuation also can get on my nerves, but since her poems were readable with or without it I again could make that concession.

This book is divided into four sections. For the most part, many poems are either in memory of someone who died or allude back to lost loved ones in Gilbert's life. This would except the majority of the poems in the fourth section, as they are all sonnets in a kind of sonnet cycle that are based on each month of the year. The sonnets all are English sonnets but do not conform to strict iambic pentameter.

It was nice to see that a literary critic can write in her own right. These poems are insightful and sometimes lead you in places you didn't expect, and they make me want to seek out more that Gilbert's written.

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gilbert is an amazing poet. Each of her poems stands on its own. Still, there is a sense that each poem is placed just so, creating a path through which Gilbert explores the grieving process.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 G466b 2005