The Hole

About the Book

This poetry book is a reaction to my wife Deborah Glaefke Gilbert’s passing on June 6, 2017, from adenocarcinoma due to asbestos poisoning. The poetic form is a form I invented. I am calling it the Glaefke Sonnet. It is both a five-stanza ballad stanza and a Shakespearian sonnet; both forms contain 140 syllables. Every tenth syllable and fourteenth syllable rhyme. The work is very down to earth, raw, and visceral, determined to be as real as possible, for loss and grief are not very pleasant or joyful. And the misery and devastation go on forever, regardless of how much healing is ever possible. If this work can act as commiseration and justification for the feelings, reactions, thoughts, and impulses that come with loss and grief for all those going through similar ordeals in this “grief and loss” community out there anywhere in our world, then good.

About the Author

T. W. Gilbert is a sixty-seven year old Northern Ohio poet, teacher, lecturer, composer, inventor, theorist, and very recent widower, who, upon his amazing wife’s passing, began writing a reaction to the devastating loss and grief by composing a structured and formed poetry collection (This book is the first in what will be a three part series). His main profession is in the field of Special Education/Intellectual Disabilities, having spent the better part of the last 48 years in the field, but also having developed a program for teaching full literacy skills in the last 26 years to individuals in the population, He has presented at many academic conventions across the United States and Canada regarding the literacy acquisition process for individuals with intellectual disabilities, has published in the Journal AAIDD 2002 June, and invented and patented a children’s learning toy to assist with literacy acquisition.