Ernest Hilbert’s new book of poems, All of You on the Good Earth, takes its title from an astronaut speaking at a larger-than-life moment. On Christmas Eve 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 witnessed that heart-stopping image of Earth rising over the Moon’s desolation. In his message to Mission Control, Commander Frank Borman, riven with homesickness, signed off: “Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.” This is a fitting title because there is something larger than life in Hilbert’s voracious range. The poems in this second collection, as in his first (Sixty Sonnets), spill out like fruit from a cornucopia. His imagination has room for sharks, Etruscans, cats, Cyril Connolly, Chelsea lofts, gravediggers, the Green Line in Philadelphia, Seneca, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
The poems in this collection spill out like fruit from a cornucopia.
Hilbert is a literary man who wears his erudition lightly. The epigraphs that begin the sections of his book come from the likes of Whitman, Byron, Montaigne, and . . . Warren Zevon? What would you expect from a poet who holds a D.Phil. from Oxford, works as an antiquarian book dealer, writes libretti, and appears in short films for a post-punk conceptual band? He channels his manic, Lowellian energy into the sixty sonnets that make up this book—yes, another sixty sonnets! One of my favorites is “Sportsmanship,” about the disappearance of an old, chivalric
