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The Triumph of Achilles
Poems consider reality, perception, aging, religion, friendship, love, myths, dreams, partings, nature, grief, and hope
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
16 people are currently reading
1343 people want to read
About the author
Louise Glück
96 books2,156 followersAmerican 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 159 reviews
January 25, 2022
Different topics in this fourth bundle, and a stand out opening poem, but I still need to read a four star or higher bundle of Glück
Never has she been further from sadness
than she is now.
- Morning
Reading a whole poet her work is an interesting experience, that I am steadily getting on with, and in Triumph of Achilles Louise Glück moves from place depiction, and more personal poems, to mythological themes and quite a few influences of the bible.
Opening poem Mock Orange brilliantly evokes a burning, sacked Troy and was the highlight of the bundle: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
Flowers in general, due to their ties to Greek mythology, feature more often:
Beauty dies: that is the source
of creation.
- Hyacinth
Besides in length, with Marathon as a very long poem exponent, the ancient influences are more than matched by biblical inspired poems. An example is Legend, where the poet recounts the immigrant experience of her paternal grandfather, juxtaposed with the travel of Joseph and Mary through the dessert:
since to speak the truth gives
the illusion of freedom.
- Legend
Never has she been further from sadness
than she is now.
- Morning
Reading a whole poet her work is an interesting experience, that I am steadily getting on with, and in Triumph of Achilles Louise Glück moves from place depiction, and more personal poems, to mythological themes and quite a few influences of the bible.
Opening poem Mock Orange brilliantly evokes a burning, sacked Troy and was the highlight of the bundle: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
Flowers in general, due to their ties to Greek mythology, feature more often:
Beauty dies: that is the source
of creation.
- Hyacinth
Besides in length, with Marathon as a very long poem exponent, the ancient influences are more than matched by biblical inspired poems. An example is Legend, where the poet recounts the immigrant experience of her paternal grandfather, juxtaposed with the travel of Joseph and Mary through the dessert:
since to speak the truth gives
the illusion of freedom.
- Legend
Read
December 2, 2022Ugliest cover so far, but easily the best poetry. Hard hitting lines and verses, and Glück is starting to extend the format of her poems. There is something so warm about how she retells Biblical stories. I wish we could have access to more interpretations through her lens. Marathon was a masterpiece, going on for page after page, giving us this gem somewhere in the middle:
I have to tell you what I’ve learned, that I know now
what happens to the dreamers.
They don’t feel it when they change. One day
they wake, they dress, they are old.
My favourite poems were:
-Metamorphosis
-Winter Morning
-Marathon
-Summer
-The Mountain
-Adult Grief
And here is The Mountain:
My students look at me expectantly.
I explain to them that the life of art is a life
of endless labor. Their expressions
hardly change; they need to know
a little more about endless labor.
So I tell them the story of Sisyphus,
how he was doomed to push
a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing
would come of this effort
but that he would repeat it
indefinitely. I tell them
there is joy in this, in the artist’s life,
that one eludes
judgment, and as I speak
I am secretly pushing a rock myself,
slyly pushing it up the steep
face of a mountain. Why do I lie
to these children? They aren’t listening,
they aren’t deceived, their fingers
tapping at the wooden desks -
So I retract
the myth; I tell them it occurs
in hell, and that the artist lies
because he is obsessed with attainment,
that he perceives the summit
as that place where he will live forever,
a place about to be
transformed by his burden: with every breath,
I am standing at the top of the mountain.
Both my hands are free. And the rock has added
height to the mountain.
I have to tell you what I’ve learned, that I know now
what happens to the dreamers.
They don’t feel it when they change. One day
they wake, they dress, they are old.
My favourite poems were:
-Metamorphosis
-Winter Morning
-Marathon
-Summer
-The Mountain
-Adult Grief
And here is The Mountain:
My students look at me expectantly.
I explain to them that the life of art is a life
of endless labor. Their expressions
hardly change; they need to know
a little more about endless labor.
So I tell them the story of Sisyphus,
how he was doomed to push
a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing
would come of this effort
but that he would repeat it
indefinitely. I tell them
there is joy in this, in the artist’s life,
that one eludes
judgment, and as I speak
I am secretly pushing a rock myself,
slyly pushing it up the steep
face of a mountain. Why do I lie
to these children? They aren’t listening,
they aren’t deceived, their fingers
tapping at the wooden desks -
So I retract
the myth; I tell them it occurs
in hell, and that the artist lies
because he is obsessed with attainment,
that he perceives the summit
as that place where he will live forever,
a place about to be
transformed by his burden: with every breath,
I am standing at the top of the mountain.
Both my hands are free. And the rock has added
height to the mountain.
January 13, 2020
"In his tent, Achilles
grieved with his whole being
and the gods saw
he was a man already dead, a victim
of the part that loved,
the part that was mortal."
anyway i always forget i don't rly vibe w louise
grieved with his whole being
and the gods saw
he was a man already dead, a victim
of the part that loved,
the part that was mortal."
anyway i always forget i don't rly vibe w louise
October 14, 2023
Mosaic legend as a response to unrecognised mosaics.
This is the 2020 Nobel Laureate’s fourth poetry collection – and one around which she retains some ambiguity, having said “That despite its absorbing agenda, despite individual poems that seem, still, among the best I have done [it] was a concession, I think to conventional imagination, or the conventional definition of ambition”.
I think this refers to the more obviously thematically epic scope of the collection in two ways:
First of all in its engagement with the epic – both Greek myths (the title poem about Achilles deep relationship with Patroclus; the rather obviously titled “Mythic Fragment” about the Diane/Achilles myth – which is possibly revisited in “The Reproach”) and Jewish stories (the childhood legends of Moses in “Day Without Night” and the story of the rise and fall of David in “A Parable” – both I have to say excellent) – as well as Christian meditation in the brilliant “Winter Morning” (a wonderful meditation on the life of Christ as seen by Mary)
Secondly in its partial move from the author’s attempt (in hew own words) to organize small pieces and short lyrics “intimate, or transfixed in immediate time ….. to make something larger, a mosaic of intellectual as well as emotional dimension” – an attempt “virtually no one outside a fairly narrow readership noted” – to some much lengthier poems which rather more obviously assemble these pieces into a whole such as the rather obviously named “Marathon” (about the stages of a relationship)
The collection is bookended by two of my favourite poems in it – the much anthologised “Mock Orange” (see 2020) and “Horse”. My reviews (with extracts)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Overall a fascinating insight into the author’s development as a poet against the background of the reception to her work, a battle she alludes to in “The Mountain” where a lecturer on literature, to the incomprehension of her keen students, tries to compares the work of an artist to the myth of Sisyphus
This is the 2020 Nobel Laureate’s fourth poetry collection – and one around which she retains some ambiguity, having said “That despite its absorbing agenda, despite individual poems that seem, still, among the best I have done [it] was a concession, I think to conventional imagination, or the conventional definition of ambition”.
I think this refers to the more obviously thematically epic scope of the collection in two ways:
First of all in its engagement with the epic – both Greek myths (the title poem about Achilles deep relationship with Patroclus; the rather obviously titled “Mythic Fragment” about the Diane/Achilles myth – which is possibly revisited in “The Reproach”) and Jewish stories (the childhood legends of Moses in “Day Without Night” and the story of the rise and fall of David in “A Parable” – both I have to say excellent) – as well as Christian meditation in the brilliant “Winter Morning” (a wonderful meditation on the life of Christ as seen by Mary)
At a time like this
a young woman traveled through the desert settlements
looking neither forward nor backward,
sitting in perfect composure on the tired animal
as the child stirred, still sealed in its profound attachment—
The husband walked slightly ahead, older, out of place;
increasingly, the mule stumbled, the path becoming
difficult in darkness
Secondly in its partial move from the author’s attempt (in hew own words) to organize small pieces and short lyrics “intimate, or transfixed in immediate time ….. to make something larger, a mosaic of intellectual as well as emotional dimension” – an attempt “virtually no one outside a fairly narrow readership noted” – to some much lengthier poems which rather more obviously assemble these pieces into a whole such as the rather obviously named “Marathon” (about the stages of a relationship)
The collection is bookended by two of my favourite poems in it – the much anthologised “Mock Orange” (see 2020) and “Horse”. My reviews (with extracts)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Overall a fascinating insight into the author’s development as a poet against the background of the reception to her work, a battle she alludes to in “The Mountain” where a lecturer on literature, to the incomprehension of her keen students, tries to compares the work of an artist to the myth of Sisyphus
… as I speak
I am secretly pushing a rock myself
slyly pushing it up the steep
face of a mountain
October 11, 2020
Liberation
My mind is clouded,
I cannot hunt anymore.
I lay my gun over the tracks of the rabbit.
It was as though I became that creature
who could not decide
whether to flee or be still
and so was trapped in the pursuer's eyes-
And for the first time I knew
those eyes have to be blank
because it is impossible
to kill and question at the same time.
Then the shutter snapped,
the rabbit went free. He flew
through the empty forest
that part of me
that was the victim.
Only victims have a destiny.
And the hunter, who believed
whatever struggles
begs to be torn apart:
that part is paralyzed.
My mind is clouded,
I cannot hunt anymore.
I lay my gun over the tracks of the rabbit.
It was as though I became that creature
who could not decide
whether to flee or be still
and so was trapped in the pursuer's eyes-
And for the first time I knew
those eyes have to be blank
because it is impossible
to kill and question at the same time.
Then the shutter snapped,
the rabbit went free. He flew
through the empty forest
that part of me
that was the victim.
Only victims have a destiny.
And the hunter, who believed
whatever struggles
begs to be torn apart:
that part is paralyzed.
December 7, 2009
This begins with perhaps my favorite Gluck poem, "Mock Orange." I also liked "Metamorphosis" (the poem within the section) about her father dying. Wow, what a punch in the face that poem is. "Night Song" was amazing. "Adult Grief," another face-puncher. Other poems in the book don't do that much for me, but perhaps that's more due to subject matter (seems to be a lot of Biblical stuff here) than style. I think this best poems really showcase Gluck's strengths: truth-telling in its most stripped-down form and really powerful, musical rhythms.
October 22, 2020
she could write anything and i'd rate it 5 stars
December 17, 2016
I have to tell you what I’ve learned, that I know now
what happens to the dreamers.
They don’t feel it when they change. One day
they wake, they dress, they are old.
*
If once you could have saved yourself,
now that time’s past: you were obstinate, pathetically
blind to change. Now you have nothing:
*
Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love.
what happens to the dreamers.
They don’t feel it when they change. One day
they wake, they dress, they are old.
*
If once you could have saved yourself,
now that time’s past: you were obstinate, pathetically
blind to change. Now you have nothing:
*
Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love.
March 23, 2024
Above the blank street, the imperfections solved by night—
June 3, 2024
Something just clicks in this one. Myth makes her poetry soar.
October 27, 2017
Stunning poetry. My faves were 'Liberation', 'Baskets' and 'Marathon'. Favourite lines: 'Only victims have a destiny' (Liberation), 'But nakedness in women is always a pose./I was not transfigured. I would never be free' (Marathon, 1.) and 'I am not a strong woman. It isn't easy/to want so much' (Baskets, 4.)
Read
April 5, 2024“For once, your body doesn’t frighten me.
From time to time, I run my hand over your face
lightly, like a dustcloth.
What can shock me now? I feel
no coldness that can’t be explained.”
From time to time, I run my hand over your face
lightly, like a dustcloth.
What can shock me now? I feel
no coldness that can’t be explained.”
August 29, 2021
“The Triumph of Achilles” from 1985 is a poem collection filled with emotions such a longing and desire. It is build in 3 parts and each combines the emotions so beautifully that one can’t stop but to keep on reading.
Read
August 17, 2022!!!!!!
August 2, 2022
Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love.
There is nothing else to love.
February 15, 2023
felt like grief on steroids
December 15, 2024
“Brooding Lines”, “Seated Figure”, “The Triumph of Achilles”, “The Reproach”
Hybrid of classical mythology and biblical narrative. Glück attempts to conceive a god she can believe in, but ultimately fails.
Hybrid of classical mythology and biblical narrative. Glück attempts to conceive a god she can believe in, but ultimately fails.
Read
August 25, 2024«Once we were happy, we had no memories. / For all the repetition, nothing happened twice.»
July 6, 2025
don’t know what happened here… i genuinely think the titular poem is bad. just a whole lot of nothing. most of these poems were boring because she failed to say anything in an interesting way—or she would compromise an interesting image or phrase by explicitly stating what she meant in the next line. very ineffective use of colons and too many poems broken into sections that were all equally dull. the first and last poem are carrying this whole collection!
May 5, 2013
I've tried before with Louise Gluck and had more success; 'The Triumph of Achilles' is not the book for me. Many of Gluck's poems here are about pursuit, loss, waning feelings. They glance, they sidle up: when they do state, they still leave me confused.
Often I find the assemblies of words rather beautiful, but also tilting from side to side, from oblique to cliche:
Elms
All day I tried to distinguish
need from desire. Now, in the dark,
I feel only bitter sadness for us,
the builders, the planers of wood,
because I have been looking
steadily at these elms
and seen the process that creates
the writhing, stationary tree
is torment, and have understood
it will make no forms but twisted forms.
The one poem that really sunk in, required re-reading, was 'Seated Figure'
it was as though you were a man in wheelchair
your legs cut off at the knee.
But I wanted you to walk.
I wanted us to walk like lovers,
arm in arm in the summer evening,
and believed so powerfully in that projection
that I had to speak, I had to press you to stand.
Why did you let me speak>
I took your silence as I took the anguish in your face,
as part of the effort to move --
It seemed to me I stood forever, holding out my hand.
And all that time, you could no more heal yourself
than I could accept what I saw.
Gluck here hits something about the roles we build up for those close to us, the desire we have to have them fill those roles, the anger and disappointment we feel when they do not do so - and when we realise we had no right to expect this of them.
Still, Gluck left me feeling unfulfilled. So I leant over in bed and pulled the half-read anthology of Jack Gilbert poems off the bedside table. Flipped it open to the last dog-eared page and remembered what it feels like when words punch you in the heart:
Michiko Dead
He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm which is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.
Often I find the assemblies of words rather beautiful, but also tilting from side to side, from oblique to cliche:
Elms
All day I tried to distinguish
need from desire. Now, in the dark,
I feel only bitter sadness for us,
the builders, the planers of wood,
because I have been looking
steadily at these elms
and seen the process that creates
the writhing, stationary tree
is torment, and have understood
it will make no forms but twisted forms.
The one poem that really sunk in, required re-reading, was 'Seated Figure'
it was as though you were a man in wheelchair
your legs cut off at the knee.
But I wanted you to walk.
I wanted us to walk like lovers,
arm in arm in the summer evening,
and believed so powerfully in that projection
that I had to speak, I had to press you to stand.
Why did you let me speak>
I took your silence as I took the anguish in your face,
as part of the effort to move --
It seemed to me I stood forever, holding out my hand.
And all that time, you could no more heal yourself
than I could accept what I saw.
Gluck here hits something about the roles we build up for those close to us, the desire we have to have them fill those roles, the anger and disappointment we feel when they do not do so - and when we realise we had no right to expect this of them.
Still, Gluck left me feeling unfulfilled. So I leant over in bed and pulled the half-read anthology of Jack Gilbert poems off the bedside table. Flipped it open to the last dog-eared page and remembered what it feels like when words punch you in the heart:
Michiko Dead
He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm which is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.
November 13, 2018
I hope I'm able to explain myself correctly, but this was such a strange reading experience! I have never had a list of Favorite-Poems-To-Come-Out-of-One-(1)-Poetry-Collection be this long (so many were! incredible! right on the nose!), yet, as a collection? As a whole? I didn't love this. It wasn't until the ante-penultimate poem that I realized that this book wasn't as chock-full of images as I expected. I really, really, really love images in poems, and this book was undoubtedly full of "passion" as the jacket suggests, but not much that I felt I could hold in my fingertips and press to my face, you know? Again, this is a library book, and I'm an addicted annotator, so maybe that hindered my reading experience (being unable to write in the book!), but still...
Also, putting that aside, this is me absolutely projecting and this is obviously totally subjective, but this also felt interestingly impersonal? Or, just very, very vague. The person that suggested Louise Glück to me said that they loved her because of her "thematic" poetry, which I suppose is what this might be? Some of these poems might have been about Glück's life, but apart from the poem about her parents or the one about her marriage, it wouldn't have been clear to me that it was. A personal preference, obviously, it's just not something I'm used to!
FAVORITE POEMS:
Edit: googling "Louise Glück" leads one to an article titled something along the lines of "Why I Don't Read Louise Glück" by Barry something-or-other and WOW are the debates about poetry heated... Didn't realize that people had strong opinions about the language vs. the subject of a poem? (Not a condescending remark, just a very surprised observation!)
Also, putting that aside, this is me absolutely projecting and this is obviously totally subjective, but this also felt interestingly impersonal? Or, just very, very vague. The person that suggested Louise Glück to me said that they loved her because of her "thematic" poetry, which I suppose is what this might be? Some of these poems might have been about Glück's life, but apart from the poem about her parents or the one about her marriage, it wouldn't have been clear to me that it was. A personal preference, obviously, it's just not something I'm used to!
FAVORITE POEMS:
EXILE
SEATED FIGURE
EMBRACE
NIGHT SONG
THE BEGINNING
SONG OF THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES
ADULT GRIEF
Edit: googling "Louise Glück" leads one to an article titled something along the lines of "Why I Don't Read Louise Glück" by Barry something-or-other and WOW are the debates about poetry heated... Didn't realize that people had strong opinions about the language vs. the subject of a poem? (Not a condescending remark, just a very surprised observation!)
June 23, 2019
A few years ago, a friend recommended Louise Gluck's "Poems: 1962 - 2012." One of the memorable poems in there was the first poem in this book: Mock Orange.
There are some great poems here, and a number that I did not care for. Somewhat standard I think.
Today, I carried the book with me as I took public transportation to an anti-war on Iran demonstration. When I got to the demo, someone right away noticed and complimented me on reading Louise Gluck. You meet the best folks at anti-war demonstrations.
There are some great poems here, and a number that I did not care for. Somewhat standard I think.
Today, I carried the book with me as I took public transportation to an anti-war on Iran demonstration. When I got to the demo, someone right away noticed and complimented me on reading Louise Gluck. You meet the best folks at anti-war demonstrations.
April 29, 2024
“alone, watching the moon rise:
tonight, a full circle,
like a woman’s eye passing over abundance.
this is the most it will ever be.
above the blank street, the imperfections
solved by night—
like our hearts: darkness
showed us their capacity.
our full hearts—at the time, they seemed so impressive.”
—from the japanese
tonight, a full circle,
like a woman’s eye passing over abundance.
this is the most it will ever be.
above the blank street, the imperfections
solved by night—
like our hearts: darkness
showed us their capacity.
our full hearts—at the time, they seemed so impressive.”
—from the japanese
July 12, 2022
'mock orange' got the erratic 'omg' annotation.
other favourites are 'winter morning', 'hyacinth', 'the triumph of achilles', bits from 'marathon' and '3. the end of the world'.
"then why did we worship clarity,
to speak, when in the end, only each other's names,
to speak, as now, not even whole words,
only vowels?"
other favourites are 'winter morning', 'hyacinth', 'the triumph of achilles', bits from 'marathon' and '3. the end of the world'.
"then why did we worship clarity,
to speak, when in the end, only each other's names,
to speak, as now, not even whole words,
only vowels?"
December 4, 2020
For probably several reasons, I had not read any of this poet’s work until this year; but when she won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, I resolved to remedy this situation immediately. Therefore, I started a chronological journey through collections of her poetry, and this is my fourth one. It is, by far, my favorite. Although it is difficult to decide which verses stand out from the rest in their emotional appeal, clever word usage, ability to inspire insight, whatever, there are a few that definitely qualify for special mention: “Metamorphosis” about the loss of her father; “The Triumph of Achilles” on the nature of grief; “Baskets” with unforgettable lines on beauty; “Summer” about the heat of passionate love; and “Hawk’s Shadow” on the intimate relation of predation in its multiple expressions. This poet’s voice is powerful, and I look forward to the fifth collection, Ararat (1990).
June 23, 2022
Once we were happy, we had no memories.
For all the repetition, nothing happened twice.
We were always walking parallel to a river
with no sense of progression
though the trees across from us
were sometimes birch, sometimes cypress-
the sky was blue, a matrix of blue glass.
While, in the river, things were going by-
a few leaves, a child's boat painted red and white,
its sail stained by the water-
As they passed, on the surface we could see ourselves;
we seemed to drift
apart and together, as the river
linked us forever, though up ahead
were other couples, choosing souvenirs.
For all the repetition, nothing happened twice.
We were always walking parallel to a river
with no sense of progression
though the trees across from us
were sometimes birch, sometimes cypress-
the sky was blue, a matrix of blue glass.
While, in the river, things were going by-
a few leaves, a child's boat painted red and white,
its sail stained by the water-
As they passed, on the surface we could see ourselves;
we seemed to drift
apart and together, as the river
linked us forever, though up ahead
were other couples, choosing souvenirs.
September 20, 2022
Although, as Glück's collections often do, this collection has a tendency to wander and lose its way, there are moments, particularly the long sequence "Marathon", which breathtakingly achieve the gravitas, yearning and mythic stature of Achilles and Patroclus' love and loss of each other.
Unlike the vapid naffness of Madeline Miller's take on the pair in The Song of Achilles, here Glück's lyrics on the heroes triumph.
However, that being said, if the collection had in fact stuck to Greek myth and not ventured into various Biblical stories and symbols, I believe this collection would've been a much greater success.
Still, it's definitely worth the read and is lyrically a strong collection from Louise Glück. Three and a half stars :))
Unlike the vapid naffness of Madeline Miller's take on the pair in The Song of Achilles, here Glück's lyrics on the heroes triumph.
However, that being said, if the collection had in fact stuck to Greek myth and not ventured into various Biblical stories and symbols, I believe this collection would've been a much greater success.
Still, it's definitely worth the read and is lyrically a strong collection from Louise Glück. Three and a half stars :))
November 26, 2025
ambitious and vulnerable and epic and liminal and sad. my favorites were marathon (esp first goodbye and the encounter), mythic fragment, elms, and the reproach.
"Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love."
"Look up into the light of the lantern.
Don’t you see? The calm of darkness
is the horror of Heaven."
"Then you kissed me—I felt
hot wax on my forehead.
I wanted it to leave a mark:
that’s how I knew I loved you.
Because I wanted to be burned, stamped,
to have something in the end—"
"Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love."
"Look up into the light of the lantern.
Don’t you see? The calm of darkness
is the horror of Heaven."
"Then you kissed me—I felt
hot wax on my forehead.
I wanted it to leave a mark:
that’s how I knew I loved you.
Because I wanted to be burned, stamped,
to have something in the end—"
May 3, 2024
I read this initially last year, after the news of her passing, and this is reread I did I did post clarity of my mourning. This is, I think, her best I've ever read. Total control over each space created in her poems, and the way they're structured (cut lines, stanza) is so clean. It's good, I think, to read Glück during the summer, where she draws so many of her energies, especially at her most erotic and rancorous
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