ON, THE WAY TO GERRY GILBERT'S
MOBY JANE THROUGH
"PICTURE WINDSHIELD"

Robert Thompson

The wor[l]d, that is, what's here (and now), is big. It's full of stuff, of stuff acting--it's apparent the moment you open Gerry Gilbert's Moby Jane, also the moment you close it. There are no neat packages in Gilbert's work, or, said more accurately, if there are, they exist only within a larger context which undercuts/scores both the package and its neatness. As Gilbert says in an interview with Barry McKinnon, "a lot of the writing that we do is done in context. Like, you wrote a book and there was maybe only one literary passage in it, but it needs all the rest or otherwise it's not there--Real books rather than fake books" (McKinnon 67). What you get from Gilbert, is what you get. What I get may, or may not be, something similar. The point is that we're getting something when we open up his book, and what we're getting is intimately involved with what we're doing--where we are--the "real." Like Gilbert's writing, our reading is going to change if we open up his book on a bus, in a cafe, after drinking, while drinking--where we open it up--both in terms of what just preceded, and the specific page. In the end, the reading and writing are interchangeable, all part of a continuum that we're all a part of: "it seems to be me writing / actually it's you reading" ("Spit Tax").

The continuum that we're all a part of is life, and is language. In his book From Next Spring Gilbert says:

. . . life is absolutely delightful, a crushing interruption I've learned to count on. Most writers progressively make more sense as they work life and the result is life looks like an out strip mine, all mine --my progression is no less than theirs (& we're all doing magnificently, as we'll see next spring) getting better & better the more we bet-- the sense of my writing is incidental, it is the incidental itself, the tooth, the worms way from the inside of life to the surface. A path which opens at the heart of the house, where we're wearing the sky and having a cup of tea. You look down at us and the first thing we do with your surprise at the end of a perfect day is put on the kettle against the hot belief that anything we'd write or say is itself the sense that life makes. (From Next Spring 27)

For Gilbert, life is going, diachronic, moving, not fixed, made up of things and things happening, "incidents" which are "incidental" to one another, which are "incidental" to the poem, to the writing (reading), to the whole damn work(s). "Incidental music" is music played in connection with the presentation of a play, motion picture, poem, etc. It's the "kettle,"

it's not cream
it's an edible oil product
they're not jeans
they're an incredible denim sausage
leg-up, mother blonde
yes, you look like tina turner
[and Gilbert) can't take [his] pen offa you. (Moby Jane 253)

It all works "against the belief that anything that we'd write or say is itself the sense that life makes." Like the slugs in his poems, Gilbert leaves his mark as he passes, gets underfoot, makes you look where you're going, goes as far as he can.

. . . It's their sense of time & power equals speed that I'm trying to derail . . . and that's not some crazy weird stoned reflex of mine, it's my view of myself in the situation, I keep looking so I wont vanish into the tube. They are scared to look, which is scary, that the people who claim to own the world are running on fear. Be brave me hearties! Let me show you what fear is! Watch me dance! Muscles are springs -- I gotta spring in my step! I get to know what I watch: the best! I've got a sense of history--and here's some good advice: the only material you can make history out of is honesty. Honesty is judging time in terms of space, and not the other way around. The other way around, time (the money, the lie, the makeup) is the death of space. I'll go the distance. Because, like a slug, I'm always right there. In the way, On the way. Speed for me is how far I can see. From here. You should see me really go. Honestly (From Next Spring 187-88)

In the wor[l]d things don't stay still. They're always moving. Hence, Gilbert's attention to the passage of space, and his renunciation of "time and power"--i.e. traditional views of history and language. History is where you're at, and where you've been, that is, where you're at. Language too. As Gilbert says in "Making Canadian":

Language grows outdoors in us--it moves like trees or birds or continents or weather or evolution or thought. Poetry is the process of language. A poem is a miracle, dissolving the walls of what might be being said, to reveal what is being hidden by such "meaning." Any received literature, philosophy, science, religion, craft, art: is just money-making temporary structure (illusion, habit, entertainment) hiding ourselves from--a fake memory attempting to fix poetry ("fix" in the sense of "to correct" and in the sense of "to remove from time," etc.). ("Making Canadian" 16)

To engage the "space" in Gilbert, his writing, is to free ourselves from the "fixed." It's not simply to view, to watch, the movement of the poet/passenger in his travels, but to undertake a passage of our own--to participate in the autobiographical, at least in Robert Creeley's sense of "auto-bio-graphy . . . translate[d] as a life tracking itself" ("Inside Out" 49). As Gilbert says in "The 1979 Spring Tour of the Canadas," in Moby Jane.

. . . like I say, there's nothing like the driver's seat, get in there behind the voice! I read, myself, a little, you know, but I still can't hear as much as just listening--actively--it's a real test of how relaxed your attention can be. What's being said starts in the music and it only makes sense when you kind of dance to it--it doesn't have to rhyme or anything--shit, it can be the Phone Book!

Yeah, I can always tell--oboy!--as soon as it's music!

Yeah but--you listen to them musicks all right--but you hear the language, what's being said, & what you're thinking about it--the poem is only one third or a quarter of what you're in to, & you have plenty of space to be really tough and critical, especially if the poem is smart to begin with--you listen through the music & you're all there & you can bring what you~re thinking but it doesn't slow you down because the poetry starts hitting everything you know--everything comes into play, in the place between your mind & the poet's--it's the way I set up my day-- & you don't have to worry about bad poems, they're good for a laugh & a cry, just don't swallow 'em--for me, getting into a poem is like seeing what my mind's made of. (Moby Jane 73-74)

Everything is in context, our actions (reading), Gilbert's, "the chinese ladies'" (Moby Jane 131), "the alcoholic's" (Moby Jane 72),Jane's, the busdriver's, and everyone else's. We bring much more than the book to our reading. The poet brings much more than pen and paper. Speaking of the autobiographical writer, Creeley says in his essay "Inside Out: Notes on the Autobiographical Mode,"

You begin at any point, and move from that point forward or backward, up or down--or in a direction you yourself choose. In and out of the system, as Buckminster Fuller would say It's a system--of valuation, habit, complex organic data, the weather, and so on. ("Inside Out" 51)

What is true of the writer Creeley is discussing in the preceding passage, is true of Gilbert, and is true of Gilbert's reader. Start reading anywhere you like. Read in any direction. "You have plenty of space."

Gilbert's writing is representative, simply, of "a life tracking itself." It is important to recognize however, how full, how complex, such a "simple" undertaking can be. For the "track" is the track of a writer, intimately involved with language, who uses language to break it open upon itself/ us:

even at the microwave-on-Premises cafe (check your
pacemaker with the bartender, suh) coffee is 50 cents each time but i stray & pray
stay & pay
listening to a young couple murmering morning nothings
to each other, shhhhhhhhhhhhhh
tinkling bands of gold
smokey lips
clear glasses
he tweed-she treed
facing each other in front of a big samoan
chatter-pattern bark
painking
i mean painting
(arf' say jack spider)
& that's the way i see it. (Moby Jane 254)

The "track" is a track of the social/cultural critic:

analysis--
the rapist can't get it up without violence
a familiar thing
like you can't get up in the morning without a cough & a
coffee
or you can't get to work without a car up your ass
or you can't get to sleep without cutting yourself off
or the english royals cant fit the birth of their latest brat into history
without conjuring up a bloody sacrificial bleeding
'2000 dead & dying?
'thanks awfully mummy' (Moby Jane 229)

The "track" is the track of a lover, a drinker, a friend--the track of a listener, a reporter of what John Tutlis calls the "real news" (Tutlis 4), in his essay "The Man From Next Spring: Notes on the Poetry of Some Gerry Gilbert"--the track of a person with a vivid imagination/memory. Add to this, our own "tracks," which Gilbert insists we do, and the possible/real relationships created by/in Moby Jane become endless--that's another clue to Gilbert's writing. You can see it in the layout of Moby Jane, the poems beginning on the front cover and running through, all the way off, the back of the book. You can see it in Gilbert's use of syntax and word-play--resisting the closed, insisting on open, freeplay/speech /signification. You can see it in Gilbert's excesses, his "filler." And, you can see it in Gilbert's treatment of space/time, particularly in his constant shift in perspective from what's going on inside his head, to what's going on around him. Moby Jane, the poems in it, is endless, insists on non-linear forms of reading, on inclusion, won't end until Gilbert and/or his reader gives it up. Far from "art imitating life," Moby Jane strives to enact it.

Gilbert, like all of us, has two kinds of sight, "inner-sight" or what's been called "memory," and "outer-sight." Speaking of "memory" and its relationship to the. autobiographical mode of writing in his essay "Inside Out," Creeley says:

. . . Try to remember. Statue. Arms. You. What did you do with them? What day was it, or night? Think. We'll give you all the time you need. "Lives of great men all remind us / we can make our lives sublime / and departing leave behind us / footsteps (prints?) on (in?) the sands of time. . ." I can't remember. Simply write as clearly as you can what you think was the situation. It's your life.

Or, paradoxically, it may have little at all to do with memory. Or let's say, memory is a source of material, fantasy as well as fact. I remember! "I remember, I remember / the house Where I was born.. . ." Like a movie my wife told me of in the old days, of doctor coming home in carriage with horse through driving rain, finally pushing his way through door into house, wife all excited and waiting for his first words, which are: Tonight history was made. I just delivered Louis Pasteur! ("Inside Out" 50-51)

With the aid of the imagination, the poet/bus (ferry?) passenger can move freely from "inner" to "outer-sight" as he will---- memory as a source of material, fantasy as well as fact." Hence, "inner-sight," and "outer-sight" are immediate experiences:

i dream of you as young now that I can't see you as old

after the party i looked in the mirror & was amazed
i hadn't seen myself for hours and thought i'd got lost on
   the way
everyone so beautiful & me so what

i kept telling them they aren't crazy but they aren't mad
i'll send them my radio
it plays all sorts of stuff they haven't said

don't argue with the children
you'll wear out the language
sing to them

wear it in
yelling it is selling it
the kitten purred it & we all heard it
i found regina
where i left her
mother west
the little old city that do
who kids have groo
into calgaroo
& edmontoo
& winnipoo

meanplace
meantime
father east
what am i doing in ontario?
what have you done with manitoba? (Moby Jane 222-23)

Presumably Manitoba's been missed while the poet was looking in at what's been going on--"i dream of you as young now that i can't see you as old." Of course, Manitoba may show up--"I'll send them my radio / it plays all sorts of stuff they haven't said." It plays all sorts of stuff Gilbert hasn't said too. As with William Carlos Williams, perception and speech (more accurately, writing) are intimately connected. "Write going. Look to Steer" (Williams 93), Williams exclaims. However, unlike Williams, Gilbert is much freer (not necessarily more independent) in his movements--in his movement from "inner" to "outer-sight," his inclusion of material, and his syntax. Gilbert rides the public transportation system, Williams drives his own car. Although, it should be noted that the poet in Gilbert is not completely divorced from the driver of the bus/ferry:

. . . like I say, there's nothing like the driver's seat,
get in there behind that voice! I read, myself, a
little, you know, but I still can't hear as much as just
listening . . .

and

lucky old bus driver gets to watch the road go bump in
the night
while we squeak in our sleep back here
pressed between the pages of heavy metal
demanding rest at rest stops (Moby Jane 250)

For Gilbert, the act of "listening," of being a "passenger" is as important to the creation of the poem as speaking or driving:

. . . the actual concern is listening. What I started to say was, was that there was a time for shutting up and listening, and listening to each other even--in terms of the actual writing--and that's important; that's where the magic happens. The writing for me is an act of listening; it's as passive as it is active. The active is killing, murderously sharp--a fast quick thing--but all the time is spent listening, waiting. (McKinnon 68)

An important, if somewhat obvious ingredient in "listening," in making the poem "real," is to stay involved with the local--that being, I take it, what, imaginatively, you know, and where you are--with all of the permutations arising out of Creeley's discussion of "memory," and my own earlier discussion of Gilbert's "inner," and "outer-sight." As Gilbert says in an interview with Barry McKinnon:

A favourite story of [his is] of Miles Davis being confronted by some jazz critic outside some concert in England in the 70s or 60s, and this person saying to him, 'I was just listening to your so and so album from 1946 and it really was awful you know, it was really low.' And Miles saying, 'man, you should have been there! The only place where you can be, [Gilbert says] is at the local level. (McKinnon 67-68)

And, in "Making Canadian": "the coffee comes from Columbia, the sugar from Australia, but it's Vancouver water" ("Making Canadian" 16). It is only natural that Gilbert should ground his poetry in the local, given his concern with "judging time in terms of space," his emphasis on "real," or "actual" objects/people as subject-matter, and his autobiographical approach to writing. Gilbert's sense of poetry as something to be "listened" to, or experienced within an immediate context (as, for instance, be-bop jazz) also, in my opinion, prescribes attention to the local--here (and now).

Gilbert wants to loosen things up, to see things on all levels from as many perspectives as they've got--and us too. Culture, language, politics, history are all deconstructed, reconstructed--binary oppositions, hierarchal thought, is out, "deadly"--multiples are in, living, "real."

"Picture Windshield" is as good an example as any other poem found in Moby Jane of Gilbert's effort to loosen things up, and to render writing/reading as a lived/living experience. "Picture Windshield" is a series of "inner" and "outer" perceptions. Like most of Gilbert's poems, it encourages non-linear forms of reading, and is, in minature, an example of the unendingness of Gilbert's project, of Moby Jane--"poems begin, stories end" ("Notes to 'Imaginary Space: Selections from the Archive"' 16). The poem utilizes pun and word play, offers implicit criticism of more traditional forms of thought, culture, and politics--remaining immediate, and true to the voice/mind of Gilbert-- plenty of space for all to play.

"Picture Windshield" begins, "jerry & jane was my grade 1 reader" (Moby Jane 264). The "jerry" of this first line replaces the expected "dick," (of Dick and Jane) undercutting/mining the reader's expectations, and pointing, possibly, to Gerry Gilbert's past identification with "dick" of "dick and jane"--as writer, and as man. The "jerry" like the "jane" also replaces /dislocates the "dick" of Moby Jane. Sexual oppositions, (i.e. the "grade one" stuff) are opened up, and replaced--a move which seems to affirm sexual difference but undercut traditional notions of sexual opposition. "The reader" is not only the book, but also the reader of the book, and, tied in with that, older, more traditional forms of reading. From the start, the "space" of the poem begins to unfold.

The poem continues, "save next week's tv listings from the morning paper" (260)--things continue to open up. This line is in the form of an imperative, but can read as either 1) outlining the actions of the poet/speaker, or 2) an imperative aimed towards the reader. That is, the temporal aspects of the poem are loosening up. Paraphrased, this line can be read as 1) "1 did save next week's tv listings," or 2) "you (reader) ought to save next week's tv listings." Both readings will get you somewhere.

Stanza two reads as follows:

first they fire everybody
then they hire back those they want
like daylight savings go on tornorrow & off hallowe'en (264)

This stanza can be seen as both a commentary on tv critics/ producers etc., and art/poetry critics /producers, since the "they" has no direct referent. As in so many places in Gilbert, syntactical slippage, or "loosening up" allows for a critique of culture--popular and academic.

The poem continues:

jane
i always pulled over & let you pass
i'd never wave you into oncoming traffic (264)

Is this the "jane" of Dick and Jane/J[g]erry and Jane, the book Gilbert is writing and we are reading, Moby Jane, or some other "Jane"--a "Jane Doe," the reader? Yes. All three, at least, since the poet/speaker "always pulled over & let [Jane] pass / [would] never wave [her] into oncoming traffic." That is, the poet/speaker will not fix /stop/pin-down/define "jane," but instead lets her "pass," move, keep active, keep alive, "real." Hence, we have a poetic, a cultural critique, and a lesson in reading, all embedded in this stanza: the implicit violence involved in waving "jane" on into "on-coming traffic" is apparent, as is the connection to past western thought/history which has been obsessed with little else but "fixing" Jane.

The next stanza contains the first major shift from what I described earlier as "inner-sight" to "outer-sight"--"click goes the pen / the driver looks at it" (264). The poet shifts from "inner" memory, thoughts, etc. to an awareness of his immediate surroundings. Syntactically, this stanza enacts what it says, and is, by this measure, a gc)od example of what Robert Creeley (and Charles Olson) meant by "form is never more than an extension of content" (Olson 16), since the driver/ passenger/ poet looks at the "click goes the pen" that he has just written down, as well as the actual "pen" he has just written it down with. The poet is aware of the "fast quick" activity he is involved in, but is also involved in "listening" to "the click of the pen"--"listening" to the very act of his writing. The "driver" in this stanza is the driver of the bus, but his connection with the poet is one which cannot, as I said earlier, be overlooked--"lucky old bus driver gets to watch the road go bump in the night. . . ."

The poem continues:

heston was in a dream last night asking for a part
   in the book
he went to high school with warren in chicago,
an intimidating place to play hockey
he can play peck
i was thinking of peck to play the white-haired
   lady beside me
with her spiderweb watchface & the pearly white
   dove diving down her lapel & a jotter parkered
   on her purse & such a tender arm to press
this sway & that (264-65)

"Heston" now has "a part in the book." The preceding stanza is very sensuous, both in terms of form and content, and jumps back and forth from the "inner" to "outer" perceptions/thoughts of the poet. Figures change positions /roles--"heston" (or is it "warren?") can "play peck," and "pecV the "white-haired lady"--once again a complete loosening of expectations and roles. "The pearly white dove diving down [the white-haired lady's] lapel," can be seen as both a description of a design on the lady's lapel, and a design underneath/beside her lapel--i.e., her bosom. The "jotter parkered on her purse" can be seen as the quick note that Gilbert has just now "jotted" down (perhaps in a style similar to Charlie "Parker"); it might also be a note sticking out of the lady's purse. The stanza ends with "& such a tender arm to press / this sway and that"--lines which catch, all at once, the movement of the arm, the lady, the bus. The language opens itself up and breathes--becomes "sensuous" in a very concrete/physical way--these lines are as inspiring, as alive, as the bodies that breathe them.

In the next stanza we are back to "jane" (if we ever really left her):

jane
this isreally your story
i'm just here to shine my knee through these jeans' last
    rip (265)

All of the possibilities for "jane" mentioned earlier, continue to exist here. The poet is here to speak, to write, to act, "to shine [his] knee through these old jeans' last rip"--also "these old jeans' last [t]rip." If this is really "jane's story," then any doubt that writing and reading are reversible in Gilbert dissolves here.

The following stanza continues with more punning and word-play, with commentary (indirect) on reading and writing, and, once again, reminds us of the "actuality" of the trip back west that the poet is on. The poem then continues with, "would passengers please refrain from popping their ears with their / eyes open" (265). The humour of/in Gilbert, his enjoyment of travel and writing, ought never to be overlooked. He is, in many places throughout Moby Jane simply--with words, images, concepts, and people, including his reader. It isn't possible to always "make sense" of everything Gilbert says/does. I suspect Gilbert would say that the same holds true in the "real" world.

The poem moves on:

i wonder if the witnesses get together & have a laugh at
   what they've seen & stood all day
'i wouldn't mind her job' says the new driver
she looks away from jehovah & waves the bus a blessing
   as we depart for hope (265)

If the "witnesses" are poets/converted readers, they very well might "get together & have a laugh at what they've seen & stood all day." The poet as proselytizing witness is very much in line with Gilbert's project. In "A Sense of Measure," Creeley says:

I want to give witness not to the thought of myself--
that specious concept of--, rather, to
what I am as simple agency, a thing evidently alive by
virtue of such activity. I want, as Charles Olson says,
to come into the world. ("A Sense of Measure" 15)

Jehovah "Witnesses" might also "get together & have a laugh at what they've seen and stood all day," but it doesn't seem as likely--Jehovah being the ultimate transcendental signifier/authority/ hander-outer of "fixation." "The new driver" of this stanza can be seen as both a new "actual" bus driver, and perhaps also as one of Gilbert's "converts/brethren." It's unclear who the "she" is in this stanza, perhaps Jane, perhaps not, it doesn't really matter, what does matter is that "she looks away from jehovah & waves the bus a blessing as we depart for hope." "Hope" the town, and as we find out later, "hope / (the absolute of no loitering)" (267), which of course, for Gilbert, is the "blessing." Once again, room for multiple interpretations--space.

Next:

watch the stream fight its way downtrain
follow that rolls
uncle fred built a spences bridge once too
so it is the same water
pass that royce (265)

The ongoing attempt to dislocate expectations--emphasize, explore the wide variety of possible relationships within the word/world continues.

Following, two stanzas:

we say
'have a nice day'
we mean
we never meet again

write defensively
don't tell lilacs
pussy willow won't she
be prepared to bite your tongue (265)

Here, as throughout, the syntax throws us out of/into the poem. These two stanzas literally "hinge" on the line "we never meet again." Saying "have a nice day" "means" "write defensively/ don't tell lilacs"--the "lie," by these terms, being embedded in the "lilacs"--for Gilbert, "the truth." "Pussy will [though] won't she[?]" is a question which may or may not be answered later in the poem. The "be prepared to bite your tongue" refers both to you, "defensive" writers/ readers, and the "pussy willow." It depends on what kind of "witness" you are.

The next two stanzas of the poem continue to emphasize the "real." "Will the real mountains please stand" (266) . . .

Gilbert then carries on in typical "trickster" fashion:

poetry says
only innocence shall
smell essential (266)

This stanza seems to propose a kind of essentialism, something

Gilbert is working against, and yet "innocence," that is, "stone bouncing down the road / yesterday I kicked a big applejuice can around the alberta legislature" (266), is exactly what Gilbert is shooting for. We must therefore reject and accept this stanza simultaneously--engage ourselves in the act of construction and de-construction as Gilbert himself does throughout much of Moby Jane.

The next three stanzas read as follows:

'canadian necrobatic team' (fraser canyon graffiti)

engineers
cruel
the world

we stop for 10 minutes at a destruction site
close your eyes in the sunlight
close pink visions of nipples fly at us (266)

These stanzas are full of word-play: engineers / cruel [and rule, i.e. measure and control] / the world" (and word)--they dam the rivers, and dam them. "We stop . . . at a destruction [rather than the expected, construction) site," and so on. The "canadian necrobatic team," "necrobatic" meaning "deathwalker"--can be seen as referring to both the legislature and the engineers. It is also, simply, "fraser canyon graffiti." Notice how the "actual" graffiti itself is context bound.

The poet goes on to say:

jane
the world may not always be on your side
but it's at your side (266)

Being "on your side" implies valuation, whereas "being at your side" does not, although it "shines." After all, "it's a ride / it's a road / it's a great Canadian painting" (266).

The next stanza shifts once again, to immediate "outward" perceptions (pieces of "dialogue" etc.), and is followed by the one line stanza: "no stomachs turning in tunnels under any sluglances please" (266)--here's Gilbert having fun again. However, there is also room for a variety of interpretations, all of which aid in moving the poem on. A few: notice the "slug-glances" are also "lances," the "stomachs" are (implicitly) "turning" because of the "tunnels," but are restricted from doing so by them. The affinity between the poet and "slugs" also adds to the scope of possible interpretations. Of course this line plays on signs such as "remove sunglasses before entering tunnel," "No turning, stopping, or changing lanes in tunnel," etc. Implicitly the "tunnels" here are the dwelling places/ constructs of "chickens pecking [making sharp points] along the road" (266). Once again however, Gilbert won't let us off that easily, since "pecking" is also kissing and eating--Gilbert allows the "real" chickens to retain their integrity/energy, while also making commentary on "cultural" chickens. The pecking also throws us back to "peck" in the earlier part of the poem. The circles continue to form. "Poems begin."

The poem concludes (at least one possible conclusion) as follows:

the dandelion & the daffodil yellow
the sea & the sky blue
the field and the tree green

the fly on the windshield
the tourist who's seen too much
that was fast

i've set just about everything down for now
feel the light

help
i can't stop writing

come to stay
of course there's space
we're poor

you girls take your room upstairs
i belong down here
near the dishes

the toilet takes doing the doing
takes a moment the moment
takes no time at all

we stare at the cat a lot (267)

Here, we are, seemingly, back to direct "outer" perceptions, and, as a result, the poem speeds up--"that was fast"--"the doing takes a moment." The poet "belong[s] down here / near the dishes" and one might add near the earth, the ground, the place. "The moment takes no time at all"--rather space--"come to stay/of course there's space"--the space of the poem, the planet, house--our, and Gilbert's imagination.

I could go on, as could the poem. In fact, it very well might, right on to/off of the back cover. What has been offered is only one of many possible readings--on, the way to Gerry Gilbert's Moby Jane through "Picture Windshield."

WORKS CITED

Creeley, Robert. "A Sense of Measure." Was That a Real Poem & other essays. Bolinas, California: Four Seasons Foundation, 1964.13-15.

___. "Inside Out." Was That a Real Poem & other essays. Bolinas, California: Four Seasons Foundation, 1964. 48-60.

Gilbert, Gerry. From Next Spring. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1977.

___. "Making Canadian." Line 5 (Spring 1985): 16-17.

___. Moby Jane. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1987.

___. "Notes to 'Imaginary Space: Selections from the Archive.'" Line 5 (Spring 1985):18-37.

___. "SpitTax" Class of Fifty Four, B.C. Monthly 35 (June 1984): n.p.

McKinnon, Barry. "Poets and Print: Barry McKinnon talks with 10 British Columbia poet/ publishers--Gerry Gilbert." Open Letter 2-3 (Summer-Fall 1988): 59-69.

Olson, Charles. "Projective Verse." Selected Writings. New York: New Directions Press, 1966. 15-26.

Tutlis, John. "The Man From Next Spring: Notes on the Poetry of Some Gerry Gilbert." Line 5 (Spring 1985): 4-15.

Williams, William Carlos. "rhe Simplicity of Disorder." Selected Essays. New York: New Directions Press, 1954. 91-102.