Descending Figure

by Louise Glück

Images of life and spiritual growth center around the themes of the garden, the mirror, and lamentations in this collection of twenty-six poems

Genres: Poetry, Nobel Prize, Poetry Plays, American, 20th Century

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

American poet Louise Elisabeth Glück served as poet laureate of the United States from 2003 to 2004.

Parents of Hungarian Jewish heritage reared her on Long Island. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and later Columbia University.

She was the author of twelve books of poetry, including: A Village Life (2009); Averno (2006), which was a finalist for The National Book Award; The Seven Ages (2001); Vita Nova (1999), which was awarded The New Yorker's Book Award in Poetry; Meadowlands (1996); The Wild Iris (1992), which received the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America; Ararat (1990), which received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. She also published a collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.

In 2001, Yale University awarded Louise Glück its Bollingen Prize in Poetry, given biennially for a poet's lifetime achievement in his or her art. Her other honors include the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Sara Teasdale Memorial Prize (Wellesley, 1986), the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection, The Wild Iris . Glück is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award ( Triumph of Achilles ), the Academy of American Poet's Prize ( Firstborn ), as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Anniversary Medal (2000), and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 2020, Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."

Glück also worked as a senior lecturer in English at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, served as a member of the faculty of the University of Iowa and taught at Goddard College in Vermont. She lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teached as the Rosencranz writer in residence at Yale University and in the creative writing program of Boston University.

Reviews

[Ulysse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Glück’s third collection
And I’m starting to dig her stuff
I had come close to defection
Now can’t seem to get enough

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some glimpses of the epic while being less defined by place than the earlier two bundles I read of the Nobel Laureate
envy
is a dance, too; the need to hurt
binds you to your partner
- Tango

Sisters, cribs, swans, deaths and fathers.
This bundle features longer poems, less anchored in place or conjuring a landscape.
Dedication to Hunger touches upon the anorexia Louise Glück suffered from: I felt what I feel now, aligning these words - it is the same need to be perfect, of which death is the mere byproduct.

Finally the titular poem, at the end of the bundle, reimagines Genesis, and is quite epic in language, loose from any reference to the personal life of the poet.

The leaves have fallen; on the dry ground
the wind makes piles of them, sorting
all it destroys
- Thanksgiving

The word
is: you give and give, you empty yourself
into a child.
- Autumnal

[Alan]

Something about this collection touched me. I am coming to it at the right moment. Glück is pulling on some deeply embedded strings. She is doing it quite well. Seems to me as if she is conjuring up an image of a love that she put herself into, to which she gave so freely. Perhaps she thought that it would be the savior of her existence, the amplifier and positive moderator to her linear life. There comes a break, a let-down so disappointing, so carnal, so human, that she cannot help but move up a few realms. She pulls on love from the sublime. She begins to fantasize about what could have been in Eden.

My favourites:
- Palais des Arts
- Swans
- Dedication to Hunger (this poem has the mother of all Freudian verses in it)
- Happiness
- Lamentations

Here is Happiness:

A man and woman lie on a white bed.
It is morning. I think
Soon they will waken.
On the bedside table is a vase
of lilies; sunlight
pools in their throats.
I watch him turn to her
as though to speak her name
but silently, deep in her mouth –
At the window ledge,
once, twice,
a bird calls.
And then she stirs; her body
fills with his breath.

I open my eyes; you are watching me.
Almost over this room
the sun is gliding.
Look at your face, you say,
holding your own close to me
to make a mirror.
How calm you are. And the burning wheel
passes gently over us.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Portrait

A child draws the outline of a body.
She draws what she can, but it is white all through,
she cannot fill in what she knows is there.
Within the unsupported line, she knows
that life is missing; she has cut
one background from another. Like a child,
she turns to her mother.

And you draw the heart
against the emptiness she has created.

[María Agustina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo que más me gusta de los primeros libros de Glück es el fantasma de su hermana muerta. (Estas ediciones de Visor dan ganas de que la vuelva a editar Pretextos)

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A child draws the outline of a body.
She draws what she can, but it is white all through,
she cannot fill in what she knows is there.
Within the unsupported line, she knows
that life is missing; she has cut
one background from another. Like a child,
she turns to her mother.

And you draw the heart
against the emptiness she has created.

This is the third collection of poetry by the 2020 Nobel Laureate – and the first in which I could start to detect a clear theme to the collection.

The titular poem reflects on the infant death of her sister- something which is explored in detail in “Ararat” – an extract

Far away my sister is moving in her crib.
The dead ones are like that,
always the last to quiet.
Because, however long they lie in the earth,
they will not learn to speak
but remain uncertainly pressing against the wooden bars,
so small the leaves hold them down.

But for me the title captures another theme of the collection – which contains a number of reflections on and examinations of beginnings (for example births and marriages), which rather than being joyous or even hopeful – are instead infused with a sense of impending tragedy and a fatalistic knowledge of how things will end – a filling in of the outline of a future life (captured in “Portrait” which opens my review).

For example “Epithalamium” - classically an invocation and prediction of blessing on a bride, becomes instead

And in the hall, the boxed roses:
what they mean

is chaos. Then begins
the terrible charity of marriage,
husband and wife
climbing the green hill in gold light
until there is no hill,
only a flat plain stopped by the sky.

Here is my hand, he said.
But that was long ago.
Here is my hand that will not harm you.

Or "Pietà" – named after Michaelangelo’s famous statue of Mary holding the body of Jesus after his Crucifixion in Jerusalem, is instead move in time (30+ years backwards) and place (to Nazareth)

Under the strained
fabric of her skin, his heart
stirred, She listened,
because he had no father.
So she knew
he wanted to stay
in her body, apart
from the world
with its cries, its
roughhousing,
but already the men
gather to see him
born; they crowd in
or kneel at at worshipful
distance, like
figures in a painting
whom the star lights, shining
steadily in its dark context

“Autumnal”’s reflections capture the sacrifice of motherhood – the life time of caring and pain involved

The word
is bear: you give and give, you empty yourself
into a child. And you survive
the automatic loss.

While perhaps the most personal poem – “Dedication to Hunger” explores the poet’s teenage Anorexia – and what drives eating disorders in teenage girls and perhaps also what drives this powerfully affecting but bleak collection.

It begins quietly
in certain female children:
the fear of death, taking as its form
dedication to hunger,
because a woman’s body
is a grave; it will accept
anything. I remember
lying in a bed at night
touching the soft, digressive breasts,
touching, at fifteen,
the interfering flesh
that I would sacrifice
until the limbs were free
of blossom and subterfuge: I felt
what I feel now, aligning these words–
it is the same need to perfect,
of which death is the mere byproduct.

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

And the past, as always, stretched before us,
still, complex, impenetrable.
*
If I could write to you
about this emptiness—
*
The sky above the sea had turned
the odd pale peach color of early evening
from which the sea withdrew, bearing
its carved boats:

[Guillermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Bajo la tensa urdimbre
de su piel, se agita
el corazón del niño. Lo escucha
ya que el niño no tiene padre.
De este modo sabe
que quiere quedarse
en su cuerpo, al margen
del mundo
con sus gritos, sus
alborotos,
pero ya los hombres
se reúnen para verlo
nacer: se aglomeran
o se arrodillan a una distancia
reverencial, como
figuras en una pintura
iluminadas por la estrella, que brilla
sin cesar en su oscuro contexto».

[Agustina de Diego · Rating 4 out of 5]

Menos mal que la edición es bilingüe porque la traducción no me gustó

[Vera Santomé · Rating 5 out of 5]

De Louise Glück nunca sobran poemas. Collín este libro da biblioteca, pero encantaríame mercalo porque que maneira de conxugar lucidez, sensibilidade e capacidade de asombro. Menuda poesía encarnada.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is tough for me to discern changes or maturing from this, her third book, to her previous two books. She deals with her familiar themes, though quieter and perhaps more subtle. Her poems seem to have to work overtime to restrain the energies of her mind.

[Diego Arango · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere in this book a poem says “the massive argument of light”, which I won’t forget.

[kate]

more exclamation points!! : !!!

[ciel]

an autumnal louise hug

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collection is broken into three part: "The Garden", "The Mirror", and "Lamentations".

The poems of "The Garden" present a personal portrait of the poet. Indeed, this is the poet at her most personal. In titular poem, "The Garden", the poet writes about her fears. In "Descending Figure", the poet writes about the death of her sister...

And then the losses,
one after another,
all supportable.
- The Garden, 1. The Fear of Birth

That body lying beside me like obedient stone -
once its eyes seemed to be opening,
we could have spoken.
- The Garden, 3. The Fear of Love

Long ago, at this hour, my mother stood
at the lawn's edge, holding my little sister.
- Descending Figure, 1. The Wanderer

And the child
relaxes in her mother's arms.
The mother does not sleep;
she stares
fixedly into the bright museum.
By spring the child will die.
- Descending Figure, 2. The Sick Child

Far away my sister is moving in her crib.
The dead ones are like that,
always the last to quiet.
- Descending Figure, 3. For My Sister


In "The Mirror", the poet presents reflections of several kinds. There is literal reflection (as in the poems "The Mirror" and "Happiness") and there is the kind of reflection that denotes memory (as in the poems "Swans" and "Portland, 1968")...

Watching you in the mirror I wonder
what it is like to be so beautiful
- The Mirror

I open my eyes; you are watching me.
Almost over this room
the sun is gliding.
Look at your face, you say
holding your own close to me
to make a mirror.
- Happiness

It was not now; it was years ago,
before you were married.
The sky above the sea had turned
the odd pale peach colour of early evening
from which the sea withdrew, bearing
its carved boats: your bodies were like that.
- Swans

You stand as rocks stand
to which the sea reaches
in transparent waves of longing;
they are marred. finally;
everything fixed is marred.
- Portland, 1968


But the most interesting reflections presented by the poet are those that do not resemble their subject. Indeed, there are moments of the uncanny, when the subject is disrupted by a disconnect of some form or another (as in the poems "Illuminations" and "The Mirror")...

Last winter he could barely speak.
I moved his crib to face the window:
in the dark mornings
he would stand and grip the bars
until the walls appeared,
calling light, light,
that one syllable, in
demand or recognition.
- Illuminations

Watching you in the mirror I wonder
what it is like to be so beautiful
and why you do not love
bu cut yourself, shaving
like a blind man. I think you let me stare
so you can turn against yourself
with greater violence,
needing to show me how you scrape the flesh away
scornfully and without hesitation
until I see you correctly,
as a man bleeding, not
the reflection I desire.
- The Mirror


The poems of "Lamentations" the poet returns to familiar themes, such as death ("Autumnal" and "Rosy"), dreams (as in "The Dream of Mourning" and "World Breaking Apart"), and mythology (as in "Aphrodite" and "Lamentations")...

So waste is elevated
into beauty. And the scattered dead
unite in one consuming vision of order.
- Autumnal

She is past being taken in by kindness,
preferring the wet streets: what death claims
it does not abandon.
- Rosy

I sleep so you will be alive,
it is that simple.
The dreams themselves are nothing.
They are the sickness you control,
nothing more.
- The Dream of Mourning

I dreamed of watching that
the way we watched the stars on summer evenings,
my hand on your chest, the wine
holding the chill of the river....
- World Breaking Apart

In time, the young wife
naturally hardens. Drifting
from her side, in imagination,
the man returns not to drudge
bu tot he goddess he projects.
- Aphrodite

But god was watching.
They felt his gold eye
projecting flowers on the landscape.
- Lamentations, 1. The Logos


Here, as in poems from the first ("Palais des Arts") and second parts ("Epithalamium"), the poet expresses her grief, a grief that finds voice in the abstract (as in "Aubade", "The Return", and "Lamentations")

She can't touch his arm in innocence again.
They have to give that up and begin
as male and female, thrust and ache.
- Palais des Arts

So much pain in the world - the formless
grief of the body, whose language
is hunger -
...
Here is my hand, he said.
But that was long ago.
Here is my hand that will not harm you.
- Epithalamium

I feel its hunger
as your hand inside me
- Aubade

but his hands were yours
so gently making their murderous claim -
And then it didn't matter
which one of you I called,
the wound was that deep.
- The Return

Nor could they keep their eyes
form the white flesh
on which wounds would show clearly
like words on a page.
- Lamentations, 4. The Clearing


Here, as in a poem from the second part ("Dedication to Hunger, 4. The Deviation"), the poet likens a woman's body to a grave (in "Autumnal"). Is this an expression of grief, or is it a commentary on the devastating effect of childbirth on a woman's body?...

It begins quietly
in certain female children:
the fear of death, taking as its form
dedication to hunger,
because a woman's body
is a grave; it will accept
anything....
- Dedication to Hunger, 4. The Deviation

you give and give, you empty yourself
into a child. And you survive
the automatic loss. Against inhuman landscape,
the tree remains a figure for grief; its form
is forced accommodation. At the grave,
it is the woman, isn't it, who bends,
the spear useless beside her.
- Autumnal

[leni swagger · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE DEVIATION
It begins quietly
in certain female children:
the fear of death, taking as its form
dedication to hunger,
because a woman's body
is a grave; it will accept
anything. I remember
lying in bed at night
touching the soft, digressive breasts,
touching, at fifteen,
the interfering flesh
that I would sacrifice
until the limbs were free
of blossom and subterfuge: I felt
what I feel now, aligning these words-
it is the same need to perfect,
of which death is the mere byproduct.

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Then the angels saw / how He divided them: / the man, the woman, and the woman's body" (Lamentation - 2 N0cturne)

This collection is beginning to show the spark of Glück's future work. This collection is a miscellaneous meditation on love, family, childhood, sisterhood, death, natural as well as biblical gods, and, briefly, feminism, all grouped in three acts: The Garden, The Mirror and Lamentations.

This collection, as well as "Firstborn" and "House on the Marshland", have more of an urban and terrestrial feel to them than, say, "The Wild Iris", which pulls poetic truth from the natural world within a garden, but one can clearly see the thematic evolution and word choice in this early work. Her poetry is so unlike my own approach to poetry so it is always delicious to read her work to enrich my own worldview.

"And then the morning comes, demanding prey. / Remember? And the world complies" (The Dream of Mourning)

"his kiss would have been / clearly tender - / Of course, of course. Except / it might as well have been / his hand over her mouth." (Grandmother)

[gonza · Rating 4 out of 5]

"At twilight I went into the street.
Rye sun hung low in the iron sky
ringed with cold plumage.
if I could write to you
about this emptiness—"

[yastikaguru · Rating 5 out of 5]

“restraint so passionate implies possession” (Palais des arts) — the first line that made me fall in love w her in undergrad, procrastinating in a lecture by reading her poems

[ivi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love."

GAGGGGGGED

[lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[tegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“i sleep so you will be alive,
it is that simple.
the dreams themselves are nothing.
they are the sickness you control,
nothing more.

i rush toward you in the summer twilight,
not in the real world, but in the buried one
where you are waiting,
as the wind moves over the bay, toying with it,
forcing thin ridges of panic—

and then the morning comes, demanding prey.
remember? and the world complies.

last night was different.
someone fucked me awake; when i opened my eyes
it was over, all the need gone
by which i knew my life.
and for one instant i believed i was entering
the stable dark of the earth
and thought it would hold me.”
— the dream of mourning

[Haines Eason · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best opening sections I've yet read. Dark, assured and timeless poems by one of the best, if not the best, contemporary voice. An essential modern collection.

[r. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“a woman’s body
is a grave; it will accept
anything”

[Yong Xiang · Rating 3 out of 5]

LG's third collection. the longer poems are definitely more impactful than the short ones, and also where her distinctive voice comes through more clearly. also, i was actually surprised to see spacing like

............ Remember
how we used to dance?

which by the standards of her later work seems quite extravagant! some of the poems, like Portrait, also felt unusually sentimental.

generally, it deals with her usual themes. nature, death, her sisters, her son all come up. although it didn't have the cohesive narrative / concept tying all the poems together, like in her later books. that's something i missed. nonetheless, my favourites were: The Drowned Children, The Garden, Descending Figure, Illuminations, Autumnal, World Breaking Apart.

World Breaking Apart

I look out over the sterile snow.
Under the white birch tree, a wheelbarrow.
The fence behind it mended. On the picnic table,
mounded snow, like the inverted contents of a bowl
whose dome the wind shapes. The wind,
with its impulse to build. And under my fingers,
the squre white keys, each stamped
with its single character. I believed
a mind's shattering released
the objects of its scrutiny: trees, blue plums in a bowl,
a man reaching for his wife's hand
across a slatted table, and quietly covering it,
as though his will enclosed it in that gesture.
I saw them come apart, the glazed clay
begin dividing endlessly, dispersing
incoherent particles that went on
shining forever. I dreamed of watching that
the way we watched the stars on summer evenings,
my hand on your chest, the wine
holding the chill of the river. There is no such light.
And pain, the free hand, changes almost nothing.
Like the winter wind, it leaves
settled forms in the snow. Known, identifiable ---
except there are no uses for them.

i like it. those are some pretty nifty links she makes there aha... also shoutout to this section, from Tango, about her younger sister:

2.

You thrashed in the crib,
your small mouth circling
the ancient repetitions.
I watched you through the bars,
both of us
actively starving. In the other room
our parents merged into the one
totemic creature:

Come, she said. Come to Mother.
You stood. You tottered toward
the inescapable body.

i don't know about you but i found this part so amusing. it reminded me of this recent interview i watched of hers, where she laughingly called a section in Faithful and Virtuous Night "funny in a stupid way". which coming from LG is unsurpsingly self-deprecating i suppose LOL.

anyway, not bad. excited to continue working my way through the rest of her books!

[Paula Aparicio · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5

he leído este libro durante 3 meses, porque es bastante denso
en este volumen que contiene dos de los poemarios de Glück tenemos muchos temas diversos, pero el que más destaca es por supuesto la mitología

a ratos comenzaban a hacérseme pesados tantos poemas sobre reescrituras de mitos y religión y sobre todo algunos poemas tan largos, no en sí por ocupar varias hojas si no por ser poemas en partes que en algunos casos llegaban a más de cinco, aunque es verdad que estos poemas divididos en partes, mucho más narrativos me han resultado interesantes por parecer microcuentos líricos, como un microcuento poetizado, dividido en poemas en vez de capítulos por así decirlo

el cuerpo, amor, deseo, la familia, el tiempo... son otros tantos de los temas recurrentes

una señora interesante, aunque a veces un poco pesada la Louise Glück, me gustaría seguir leyendo algo más de ella, quizá más moderno o menos denso

[Luke]

Palais Des Arts

Love long dormant showing itself:
the large expected gods
caged really, the columns
sitting on the lawn, as though perfection
were not timeless but stationary—that
is the comedy, she thinks,
that they are paralyzed. Or like the matching swans,
insular, circling the pond: restraint so passionate
implies possession. They hardly speak.
On the other bank, a small boy throws bits of bread
into the water. The reflected monument
is stirred, briefly, stricken with light—
She can't touch his arm in innocence again.
They have to give that up and begin
as male and female, thrust and ache.


Lamentations

...
And from the meaningless browns and greens
at last God arose, His great shadow
darkening the sleeping bodies of His children,
and leapt into heaven.

How beautiful it must have been,
the earth, that first time
seen from the air.

[Medeea Em · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mirror

Watching you in the mirror I wonder
what it is like to be so beautiful
and why you do not love
but cut yourself, shaving
like a blind man. I think you let me stare
so you can turn against yourself
with greater violence,
needing to show me how you scrape the flesh away
scornfully and without hesitation
until I see you correctly,
as a man bleeding, not
the reflection I desire.

"Descending Figure" marked an early attempt at control, at shaping grief into clarity. The voice is stark, the imagery unrelenting, yet the music of later work is only nascent here. The obsessions—loss, silence, the body's betrayals—are present, but not yet fully realized. If the later volumes refine and deepen, this one stands as an urgent, if somewhat unresolved, precursor.

[iris irimia]

«The dead ones are like that, / always the last to quiet./ Because, however long they lie in the earth, /they will not learn to speak / but remain uncertainly pressing against the wooden bars, / so small the leaves hold them down»

«The word / is bear: you give and give, you empty yourself / into a child. And you survive / the automatic loss. Against inhuman landscape, / the tree remains a figure for grief; its form / is forced accommodation. At the grave, / it is the woman, isn't it, who bends, / the spear useless beside her»

[rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Descending Figure is a rather short poem collection by Louise Glück from 1980. It contains themes such a grief, family and the self. Some of the poems are more easy to follow and interpret while others need to be reread a second time. Which in my opinion is totally okay and a good poem should leave you with the need to understand it more.