Fortunately, we don’t always have to “get it” the first time we encounter an author. Sometimes, as Rebecca Dunham writes, “we need to mature ourselves to understand what makes a poem or novel great.” Dunham, in “Risking Delight,” a web-exclusive from the Missouri Review, considers the poet Jack Gilbert and his latest book, Refusing Heaven, in this very context. Dunham is a poet and Ph.D. student in English at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
