[2] The same year Monolithos was published, Gilbert's partner Michiko Nogami died of cancer.
Released by Alfred A. Knopf in a 1982 hardcover edition, Monolithos came twenty years after Views of Jeopardy, which won Gilbert the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1962.
However, the limited availability of this edition has caused the book's value to climb from its original six-dollar publication price to amounts between $100 and $250, depending on the seller.
[3] Of the title, Gilbert writes in the foreword, "Monolithos means single stone, and refers to the small hill behind our house which gave the place we lived its name.
It is the tip of a non-igneous stone island buried in debris when most of Thira blew apart 3,500 years ago.