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Poems 1962-2012
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE The collected works of the inimitable Pulitzer Prize–winning poet It is the astonishment of Louise Glück's poetry that it resists collection. With each successive book her drive to leave behind what came before has grown more fierce, the force of her gaze fixed on what has yet to be imagined. She invented a form to accommodate this need, the book-length sequence of poems, like a landscape seen from above, a novel with lacunae opening onto the unspeakable. The reiterated yet endlessly transfigured elements in this landscape—Persephone, a copper beech, a mother and father and sister, a garden, a husband and son, a horse, a dog, a field on fire, a mountain—persistently emerge and reappear with the dark energy of the inevitable, shot through with the bright aspect of things new-made. From the outset ("Come here / Come here, little one"), Gluck's voice has addressed us with deceptive simplicity, the poems in lines so clear we "do not see the intervening fathoms." From within the earth'sbitter disgrace, coldness and barrennessmy friend the moon she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?To read these books together is to understand the governing paradox of a life lived in the body and of the work wrested from it, the one fated to die and the other to endure.
658 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 13, 2012
About the author
Louise Glück
102 books2,277 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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November 10, 2014
‘The night isn’t dark; the world is dark,’ wrote poet Louise Glück—luckily for us all, Glück’s poetry is a shining star in the darkness of the world. A star you can chart your course by across the tumultuous waves of life. I was saddened to see Glück passed away this past week on Oct. 13th at the age of 80 but like the way we can still see stars in the night sky that have long since extinguished, her words will remain a beacon in the dark for long to come. When the Nobel Committee awarded her the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020, they praised ‘her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,’ and I’d like to add that she also made individual existence beautiful even amidst all the sadness and grief that makes its way into her poems. She made being human a gorgeous and near mythical experience. Publishinging 13 books of poems during her life, the first 11 of which appear here in Poems 1962-2012, as well as two volumes of essays and the short novella Marigold and Rose, Glück was recipient of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 (for The Wild Iris), the National Book Award in 2014 (for Faithful and Virtuous Night), and among other awards she also served as the US Poet Laureate from 2003-2004. Her work feels highly personal, yet universal, and while she wrote on a wide variety of topics, themes of death, grief, loneliness and renewal are frequently pondered through her poems. A favorite poet of mine who will certainly be missed but also has left a body of work that will continue to charm and comfort readers. And since I already mentioned the gorgeous opening lines, here is a personal favorite:
Departure
The night isn’t dark; the world is dark.
Stay with me a little longer.
Your hands on the back of the chair —
that’s what I’ll remember.
Before that, lightly stroking my shoulders.
Like a man training himself to avoid the heart.
In the other room, the maid discreetly
putting out the light I read by.
The room with its chalk walls —
how will it look to you I wonder
once your exile begins? I think your eyes will seek out
its light as opposed to the moon.
Apparently, after so many years, you need
distance to make plain its intensity.
Your hands on the chair, stroking
my body and the wood in exactly the same way.
Like a man who wants to feel longing again,
who prizes longing above all other emotion.
On the beach, voices of the Greek farmers,
impatient for sunrise.
As though dawn will change them
from farmers into heroes.
And before that, you are holding me because you are going away—
these are statements you are making,
not questions needing answers.
How can I know you love me
unless I see you grieve over me?
For a poet who’s first book, Firstborn, was rejected 28 times before finding a home, Glück has made quite a mark on the world of poetry. Her poems are always surprising, often shifting in unexpectedly as if caught on a wind of their own making and tumbling into the readers heart in surprising ways. Poet Robert Hahn praised her work for being ‘radically inconspicuous’ with ‘virtually an absence of style,’ and each volume of her works always feels so fresh and distinct from the others. She has spoken about trying to never grow stale in her approach to poetry and always try to grow. She is often praised for being difficult to pin down, something she prides herself on. In an interview she responded that ‘as soon as I can place myself and describe myself—I want immediately to do the opposite thing’ and this helps keep things interesting for both writer and reader. She approaches writing as if trying to track down the meaning through the act:
There are so many themes and ideas explored in her poems, usually dealing with forms of grief and introspection. She is often referred to as a confessional poet, though the “I” of her poems vary in distance from the self. We see her speak openly about her family life growing in many:
First Memory
Long ago, I was wounded. I lived to revenge myself against my father, not for what he was-
for what I was: from the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved.
It meant I loved.
Though sometimes she will explore similar themes through a character of sorts, such as the frequent use of Telemachus (and other characters from greek mythology—I once tracked down as many poems about Persephone and I possibly could and Glück has one of my favorites) which allows Glück to address very personal ideas while stepping outside of them and expanding the universality by us all looking from the outside in. For example, the below poem could be an extension on the ideas of the one above:
Telemachus’ Detachment
When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also
insane. Also
very funny.
Her poems always become a window to see the world anew, using the self of characters as a window into these ideas. Windows are a common theme in her poems, both literal and metaphysical windows and I find the line from her poem Twilight shows exactly how her poems create worlds of their own to allow us to better address our own: ‘In the window, not the world but a squared off landscape/ representing the world.’
“you are not alone,
the poem said
in the dark tunnel.”
Returning to her technique of separating the I of the poem from the I of the poet, her most notable use is in her Pulitzer Prize winning collection The Wild Iris, a volume she describes as ‘ suffused with awe’ and ‘deeply lyrical,’ where despite having many separate poems she ‘meant it to read as a single entity.’ The titular poem is one of her best known:
The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
Here we see ideas of death and renewal told through the voice of a annual flower. She does well in this volume to make nature into a dynamic symbolism and while the poem is a flower speaking, it is still very code as human emotion like a psychological personification. While her poetry often addresses death she does so in a way that registers as empowering, such as in the collection The Triumph of Achilles where Achilles’ eventual acceptance of his own mortality allows him to grow into a fully realized being.
Crossroads
My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar, like what I remember of love when I was young
love that was so often foolish in its objectives but never in its choices, its intensities.
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised-
My soul has been so fearful, so violent:
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,
not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:
it is not the earth I will miss, it is you I will miss.
There is so much emotion and beauty in the works of Louise Glück that no singular review could even begin to do anything beyond peak through a crack in the window. This collected poems is an indispensable volume and my copy is well worn and loved from years of reading and rereading. It was sad to pull it down off the shelf now knowing she was no longer with us, but her own words flowed out as such a moving tribute to her life. A favorite poet that will surely be missed.
5/5
The Night Migrations
This is the moment when you see again the red berries of the mountain ash and in the dark sky
the birds' night migrations.
It grieves me to think the dead won't see them-these things we depend on, they disappear.
What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won't need these pleasures anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough, hard as that is to imagine.
Departure
The night isn’t dark; the world is dark.
Stay with me a little longer.
Your hands on the back of the chair —
that’s what I’ll remember.
Before that, lightly stroking my shoulders.
Like a man training himself to avoid the heart.
In the other room, the maid discreetly
putting out the light I read by.
The room with its chalk walls —
how will it look to you I wonder
once your exile begins? I think your eyes will seek out
its light as opposed to the moon.
Apparently, after so many years, you need
distance to make plain its intensity.
Your hands on the chair, stroking
my body and the wood in exactly the same way.
Like a man who wants to feel longing again,
who prizes longing above all other emotion.
On the beach, voices of the Greek farmers,
impatient for sunrise.
As though dawn will change them
from farmers into heroes.
And before that, you are holding me because you are going away—
these are statements you are making,
not questions needing answers.
How can I know you love me
unless I see you grieve over me?
For a poet who’s first book, Firstborn, was rejected 28 times before finding a home, Glück has made quite a mark on the world of poetry. Her poems are always surprising, often shifting in unexpectedly as if caught on a wind of their own making and tumbling into the readers heart in surprising ways. Poet Robert Hahn praised her work for being ‘radically inconspicuous’ with ‘virtually an absence of style,’ and each volume of her works always feels so fresh and distinct from the others. She has spoken about trying to never grow stale in her approach to poetry and always try to grow. She is often praised for being difficult to pin down, something she prides herself on. In an interview she responded that ‘as soon as I can place myself and describe myself—I want immediately to do the opposite thing’ and this helps keep things interesting for both writer and reader. She approaches writing as if trying to track down the meaning through the act:
‘When I’m trying to put a poem or a book together, I feel like a tracker in the forest following a scent, tracking only step to step. It’s not as though I have plot elements grafted onto the walls elaborating themselves. Of course, I have no idea what I’m tracking, only the conviction that I’ll know it when I see it.’
There are so many themes and ideas explored in her poems, usually dealing with forms of grief and introspection. She is often referred to as a confessional poet, though the “I” of her poems vary in distance from the self. We see her speak openly about her family life growing in many:
First Memory
Long ago, I was wounded. I lived to revenge myself against my father, not for what he was-
for what I was: from the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved.
It meant I loved.
Though sometimes she will explore similar themes through a character of sorts, such as the frequent use of Telemachus (and other characters from greek mythology—I once tracked down as many poems about Persephone and I possibly could and Glück has one of my favorites) which allows Glück to address very personal ideas while stepping outside of them and expanding the universality by us all looking from the outside in. For example, the below poem could be an extension on the ideas of the one above:
Telemachus’ Detachment
When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also
insane. Also
very funny.
Her poems always become a window to see the world anew, using the self of characters as a window into these ideas. Windows are a common theme in her poems, both literal and metaphysical windows and I find the line from her poem Twilight shows exactly how her poems create worlds of their own to allow us to better address our own: ‘In the window, not the world but a squared off landscape/ representing the world.’
“you are not alone,
the poem said
in the dark tunnel.”
Returning to her technique of separating the I of the poem from the I of the poet, her most notable use is in her Pulitzer Prize winning collection The Wild Iris, a volume she describes as ‘ suffused with awe’ and ‘deeply lyrical,’ where despite having many separate poems she ‘meant it to read as a single entity.’ The titular poem is one of her best known:
The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
Here we see ideas of death and renewal told through the voice of a annual flower. She does well in this volume to make nature into a dynamic symbolism and while the poem is a flower speaking, it is still very code as human emotion like a psychological personification. While her poetry often addresses death she does so in a way that registers as empowering, such as in the collection The Triumph of Achilles where Achilles’ eventual acceptance of his own mortality allows him to grow into a fully realized being.
Crossroads
My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar, like what I remember of love when I was young
love that was so often foolish in its objectives but never in its choices, its intensities.
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised-
My soul has been so fearful, so violent:
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,
not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:
it is not the earth I will miss, it is you I will miss.
There is so much emotion and beauty in the works of Louise Glück that no singular review could even begin to do anything beyond peak through a crack in the window. This collected poems is an indispensable volume and my copy is well worn and loved from years of reading and rereading. It was sad to pull it down off the shelf now knowing she was no longer with us, but her own words flowed out as such a moving tribute to her life. A favorite poet that will surely be missed.
5/5
The Night Migrations
This is the moment when you see again the red berries of the mountain ash and in the dark sky
the birds' night migrations.
It grieves me to think the dead won't see them-these things we depend on, they disappear.
What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won't need these pleasures anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough, hard as that is to imagine.
February 20, 2022
An interesting experience to go through the entire genre of a Nobel laureate. Poems that grow considerably more hard-hitting further into the oeuvre of Louis Gluck, with highlights for me Ararat, The Seven Ages and A Village Life
Sad to hear Gluck passed 13 October 2023!
i) - 2 stars - 17-1-22 - Firstborn: Poems - 1968: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
ii) - 3 stars - 18-1-22 - The House on Marshland - 1975: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
iii) - 3 stars - 20-1-22 - Descending Figure-1980:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
iv) - 3 stars - 24-1-22 - The Triumph of Achilles - 1985:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
v) - 5 stars - 25-1-22 - Ararat - 1990:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
vi) - 2.5 stars - 28-1-22 - The Wild Iris - 1992:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
vii) - 3 stars - 2-2-22 - Meadowlands - 1996:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
viii) - 3 stars - 8-2-22 - Vita Nova - 1999:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
ix) - 4.5 stars - 13-2-22 - The Seven Ages - 2001:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
x) - 3.5 stars - 16-2-22 - Averno - 2006:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
xi) - 4 stars - 20-2-22 - A Village Life - 2009:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Sad to hear Gluck passed 13 October 2023!
i) - 2 stars - 17-1-22 - Firstborn: Poems - 1968: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
ii) - 3 stars - 18-1-22 - The House on Marshland - 1975: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
iii) - 3 stars - 20-1-22 - Descending Figure-1980:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
iv) - 3 stars - 24-1-22 - The Triumph of Achilles - 1985:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
v) - 5 stars - 25-1-22 - Ararat - 1990:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
vi) - 2.5 stars - 28-1-22 - The Wild Iris - 1992:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
vii) - 3 stars - 2-2-22 - Meadowlands - 1996:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
viii) - 3 stars - 8-2-22 - Vita Nova - 1999:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
ix) - 4.5 stars - 13-2-22 - The Seven Ages - 2001:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
x) - 3.5 stars - 16-2-22 - Averno - 2006:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
xi) - 4 stars - 20-2-22 - A Village Life - 2009:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
April 30, 2015
I am tired of having hands
she said
I want wings
~Blue Rotunda
Two months of slowly, quietly, making my way through this extraordinary collection. Hundreds of poems, lines I want to live inside.
The mountain stands like a beacon, to remind the night that the earth still exists,
that it mustn't be forgotten.
~Before the Storm
Because the scope of this collection is so vast (fifty years!), we see the span of a woman's life, from her childhood anorexia
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
to reflecting on aging and death.
You've stopped being here in the world.
You're in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning.
~Telescope
There is great loss and pain in so many of these poems, a woman looking back on her life in anger and sorrow, but almost never regret.
You having turned from me
I dreamed we were beside a pond between two mountains
It was night
The moon throbbed in its socket.
~12.6.71
Many of the poems, written in different eras, focus on classical Greek literature and mythology. Glück ponders and rewrites legend, playing with notions of history, war, country, heroism, and idolatry.
And many, perhaps the most poignant poems she offers, center on her family. Grounding and tender, particularly those which feature a beloved, deceased sister.
But it is her exploration of love and passion that I found most compelling.
You live in me. Malignant.
Love, you ever want me, don't.
The list of poems I will return to, for their language, turns of phrase, themes, the ways in which they enthralled and spoke to me, spills down two sides of a notebook page. Inspiration for my own writing work, ways into a story, a character's head, ways into my own soul.
A tremendous body of work, a poet without parallel.
she said
I want wings
~Blue Rotunda
Two months of slowly, quietly, making my way through this extraordinary collection. Hundreds of poems, lines I want to live inside.
The mountain stands like a beacon, to remind the night that the earth still exists,
that it mustn't be forgotten.
~Before the Storm
Because the scope of this collection is so vast (fifty years!), we see the span of a woman's life, from her childhood anorexia
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
to reflecting on aging and death.
You've stopped being here in the world.
You're in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning.
~Telescope
There is great loss and pain in so many of these poems, a woman looking back on her life in anger and sorrow, but almost never regret.
You having turned from me
I dreamed we were beside a pond between two mountains
It was night
The moon throbbed in its socket.
~12.6.71
Many of the poems, written in different eras, focus on classical Greek literature and mythology. Glück ponders and rewrites legend, playing with notions of history, war, country, heroism, and idolatry.
And many, perhaps the most poignant poems she offers, center on her family. Grounding and tender, particularly those which feature a beloved, deceased sister.
But it is her exploration of love and passion that I found most compelling.
You live in me. Malignant.
Love, you ever want me, don't.
The list of poems I will return to, for their language, turns of phrase, themes, the ways in which they enthralled and spoke to me, spills down two sides of a notebook page. Inspiration for my own writing work, ways into a story, a character's head, ways into my own soul.
A tremendous body of work, a poet without parallel.
Read
May 29, 2021Five months of quality time with Glück.
No regrets.
Video review on Leaf by Leaf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwXFT...
No regrets.
Video review on Leaf by Leaf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwXFT...
June 25, 2021
This is a compilation of the first eleven collections of poetry by the Nobel Laureate.
I read them as individual collections published by her UK publisher Carnacet and would recommend this if your budget allows as I think it better reflects how the poems were conceived – one of the things that attracts me to Louise Glück given my very strong preference for literary long-form fiction over poetry is the coherence of her collections, the best of which effectively operate more like novellas told in poetry form.
However for convenience and economy this may be a better way for many to access her work, particularly in Kindle format.
My reviews of the individual collections ranked by order of my preferences
5*
The Wild Iris (1992)
Ararat (1990)
A Village Life (2009)
4*
The Triumph of Achilles (1985)
The Seven Ages (2001)
Descending Figure (1980)
3*
Meadowlands (1997)
Vita Nova (1999)
House on the Marshland (1975)
2*
Averno (2006)
First Born (1968)
I read them as individual collections published by her UK publisher Carnacet and would recommend this if your budget allows as I think it better reflects how the poems were conceived – one of the things that attracts me to Louise Glück given my very strong preference for literary long-form fiction over poetry is the coherence of her collections, the best of which effectively operate more like novellas told in poetry form.
However for convenience and economy this may be a better way for many to access her work, particularly in Kindle format.
My reviews of the individual collections ranked by order of my preferences
5*
The Wild Iris (1992)
Ararat (1990)
A Village Life (2009)
4*
The Triumph of Achilles (1985)
The Seven Ages (2001)
Descending Figure (1980)
3*
Meadowlands (1997)
Vita Nova (1999)
House on the Marshland (1975)
2*
Averno (2006)
First Born (1968)
Read
November 21, 2014One of those leisurely reads. You know, when the morning paper's late. Read a few Louises. Plain, conversational, at times unlovely. As with Hemingway, gives you ideas. Yes, I can do this. Deceivingly simple. No problem. Imitation. Success. But, not really. Luckily, we share a love of the earth, the seasons, plants, animals. Louise writes much more first-person than I dare to. Confessional stuff. Her husband, God help us. Persephone, Gods help her. But it finished strong. "The Village" set. Thornton Wilder would be proud. As I am. To finish. At last. Now need a new fill-in for when the morning paper's late. And boy is it late. A lot.
November 15, 2012
This is the book you'll want to spend time with. Not because the poems are difficult (though they occasionally can be) but because the poems are so candid and brave. It's wonderful to see that even the very early poems had a wildness, an untamed nature that made the work refreshing.
This is a dream gift for anyone who's a fan of Gluck. The size of the book makes it most suitable for libraries. If this book had existed when I was in graduate school, I would have made it my prize collection and quoted from it extensively.
This is a dream gift for anyone who's a fan of Gluck. The size of the book makes it most suitable for libraries. If this book had existed when I was in graduate school, I would have made it my prize collection and quoted from it extensively.
February 2, 2023
Omens
I rode to meet you: dreams
like living beings swarmed around me
and the moon on my right side
followed me burning.
I rode back: everything changed.
My soul in love was sad
and the moon on my left side
trailed without hope.
To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
make, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.
(after Alexander Pushkin)
Louise Glück is a disturbance in the force…and the force of her poetry is palpable. This is a mammoth collection of her writings that would take a stronger person than me to withstand.
Much of it is profoundly sad. Her topics and word choices leave their marks on my psyche. It is hard to use the word “enjoy” but it is equally difficult to deny the skill and power.
Lullaby
My mother’s an expert in one thing:
sending people she loves into the other world.
The little ones, the babies---these
she rocks, whispering or singing quietly. I can’t say
what she did for my father;
Whatever it was, I’m sure it was right.
It’s the same thing, really, preparing a person
for sleep, for death. The lullabies---they all say
don’t be afraid, that’s how they paraphrased
the heartbeat of the mother.
So the living slowly grow calm; it’s only
the dying who can’t, who refuse.
The dying are like tops, like gyroscopes---
they spin so rapidly they seem to be still.
Then they fly apart: in my mother’s arms,
my sister was a cloud of atoms, of particles---that’s the difference.
When a child’s asleep, it’s still whole.
My mother’s seen death; she doesn’t talk about the soul’s integrity.
She’s held an infant, an old man, as by comparison the dark grew
solid around them, finally changing to earth.
The soul’s like all matter:
why would it stay intact, stay faithful to its one form,
when it could be free?
I rode to meet you: dreams
like living beings swarmed around me
and the moon on my right side
followed me burning.
I rode back: everything changed.
My soul in love was sad
and the moon on my left side
trailed without hope.
To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
make, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.
(after Alexander Pushkin)
Louise Glück is a disturbance in the force…and the force of her poetry is palpable. This is a mammoth collection of her writings that would take a stronger person than me to withstand.
Much of it is profoundly sad. Her topics and word choices leave their marks on my psyche. It is hard to use the word “enjoy” but it is equally difficult to deny the skill and power.
Lullaby
My mother’s an expert in one thing:
sending people she loves into the other world.
The little ones, the babies---these
she rocks, whispering or singing quietly. I can’t say
what she did for my father;
Whatever it was, I’m sure it was right.
It’s the same thing, really, preparing a person
for sleep, for death. The lullabies---they all say
don’t be afraid, that’s how they paraphrased
the heartbeat of the mother.
So the living slowly grow calm; it’s only
the dying who can’t, who refuse.
The dying are like tops, like gyroscopes---
they spin so rapidly they seem to be still.
Then they fly apart: in my mother’s arms,
my sister was a cloud of atoms, of particles---that’s the difference.
When a child’s asleep, it’s still whole.
My mother’s seen death; she doesn’t talk about the soul’s integrity.
She’s held an infant, an old man, as by comparison the dark grew
solid around them, finally changing to earth.
The soul’s like all matter:
why would it stay intact, stay faithful to its one form,
when it could be free?
January 19, 2026
Unless the shock wasn’t deep enough.
Then you weren’t vaccinated, you were addicted.
This is truly a stellar compendium. If you need a turgid trove to reflect our time alive, this might do the trick. It spans countless summer nights, those occasions of infinity particularly for the young.
Because the mother’s sick to death of her life
and needs silence.
The thrall remained harnessed despite the bitter mercies of the Noumenal. Our author drank deeply from life and the Aesir obliged with weary wisdom and considerable pain. There are memories of the soil and first snowfall. Classical erudition is present but not cloying, no need for bank manager eschatology.
I’m sort of choked by awe at the moment but I find it fair to suggest this is a favorite book of verse and quite possibly the favorite.
Then you weren’t vaccinated, you were addicted.
This is truly a stellar compendium. If you need a turgid trove to reflect our time alive, this might do the trick. It spans countless summer nights, those occasions of infinity particularly for the young.
Because the mother’s sick to death of her life
and needs silence.
The thrall remained harnessed despite the bitter mercies of the Noumenal. Our author drank deeply from life and the Aesir obliged with weary wisdom and considerable pain. There are memories of the soil and first snowfall. Classical erudition is present but not cloying, no need for bank manager eschatology.
I’m sort of choked by awe at the moment but I find it fair to suggest this is a favorite book of verse and quite possibly the favorite.
October 9, 2020
লুকোনো জেমস আছে কিছু - "কবিতার বইগুলো যেমন হয় আরকি।
ভালো লেগেছে Confession, The wish, The Gift কবিতা সহ ছোট ছোট আরো বেশ কিছু বাক্য।
My mother wants to know
why, if I hate
family so much, I went ahead and
had one. I don't answer my mother.
What I hated
was being a child,
having no choice about what people I loved.
I don't love my son
the way I meant to love him.
I thought l'd be
the lover of orchids
who finds red trillium growing
in the pine shade,and
doesn't touch it
doesn't need to possess it.
What I am is the scientist,
who comes to that flower
with a magnifying glass and doesn't leave, though
the sun burns a brown the flower. Which is
circle of grass around
more or less the way my mother loved me.
I must learn
to forgive my mother,
now that i'm helpless to spare my son.
ভালো লেগেছে Confession, The wish, The Gift কবিতা সহ ছোট ছোট আরো বেশ কিছু বাক্য।
My mother wants to know
why, if I hate
family so much, I went ahead and
had one. I don't answer my mother.
What I hated
was being a child,
having no choice about what people I loved.
I don't love my son
the way I meant to love him.
I thought l'd be
the lover of orchids
who finds red trillium growing
in the pine shade,and
doesn't touch it
doesn't need to possess it.
What I am is the scientist,
who comes to that flower
with a magnifying glass and doesn't leave, though
the sun burns a brown the flower. Which is
circle of grass around
more or less the way my mother loved me.
I must learn
to forgive my mother,
now that i'm helpless to spare my son.
October 20, 2020
Leio muito poesia em língua portuguesa, mas devo confessar que sou meio relapsa com a poesia norte-americana, tirando Audre Lorde e Adrienne Rich que estão entre minhas poetas favoritas, não me aventuro muito na poesia completa dos americanos, essa minha mesma negligência pediu que eu enfrentasse Louise Gluck com afinco já que ela acabara de ganahar o prêmio máximo da literatura.
De fato ela é excelente, tendo sua obra-prima Meadowlands o poder e o fascínio dos grandes poetas, mesmo assim num computo geral não a considero hoje uma das minha poetas favoritas dos EUA, mas que vale a pena ser lida com louvor.
De fato ela é excelente, tendo sua obra-prima Meadowlands o poder e o fascínio dos grandes poetas, mesmo assim num computo geral não a considero hoje uma das minha poetas favoritas dos EUA, mas que vale a pena ser lida com louvor.
November 11, 2022
This collection includes poetry from a fifty year period of Louise Glück's life, from poetry first published when she was 25, ending before her 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her poems were frequently retellings of myths and parables or referred to classical themes, as in this fragment from Saint Joan.
I kept being alive
when I should have been burning:
I was Joan, I was Lazarus. (2001)
Sometimes Glück's poems were funny, as in the minor squabbles between spouses in the Meadowland series. Sometimes they were prayers to an assumed-deaf God – followed by replies from a God who isn't heard.
Glück's chapbooks generally centered around a theme – love, loss, grief, family conflict . They often felt discouraged and dysthymic, with some awe, but little joy. Her poems felt very personal. (Many are written in first person.) I found myself wondering how her parents, sister, exes, etc. felt about being featured in her poems and wondered whether I sometimes thought that her poems were written to someone in her inner circle – when they weren't – as with Hesitate to Call (1968):
Lived to see you throwing
Me aside. That fought
Like netted fish inside me. Saw you throbbing
In my syrups. Saw you sleep. And lived to see
That all that all flushed down
The refuse. Done? It lives in me.
You live in me. Malignant.
Love, you ever want me, don’t.
I hate confessing this, but I often don't enjoy poetry. I read it because that's what literate people do, because I hope to learn to understand it better, because one of my friends is a poet. And I do understand some of Glück's poetry, the poems featured here being three. I like her shorter and more easily decoded poetry, where Penelope, Telemachus, Circe, and Odysseus, for example, help us understand contemporary problems, as in this fragment from Circe's Power (1996):
I never turned anyone into a pig.
Some people are pigs; I make them
look like pigs.
I’m sick of your world
that lets the outside disguise the inside.
But some poems use metaphors that I don't follow. Glück's longer poems, several pages long, are often more obscure and my eyes wandered.
But, after I read several poems and moved to whatever else I was reading, I liked the way my mind reformatted that novel into free verse, how I found music and rhythm that I otherwise would miss.
I liked the way that everything became poetry.
I kept being alive
when I should have been burning:
I was Joan, I was Lazarus. (2001)
Sometimes Glück's poems were funny, as in the minor squabbles between spouses in the Meadowland series. Sometimes they were prayers to an assumed-deaf God – followed by replies from a God who isn't heard.
Glück's chapbooks generally centered around a theme – love, loss, grief, family conflict . They often felt discouraged and dysthymic, with some awe, but little joy. Her poems felt very personal. (Many are written in first person.) I found myself wondering how her parents, sister, exes, etc. felt about being featured in her poems and wondered whether I sometimes thought that her poems were written to someone in her inner circle – when they weren't – as with Hesitate to Call (1968):
Lived to see you throwing
Me aside. That fought
Like netted fish inside me. Saw you throbbing
In my syrups. Saw you sleep. And lived to see
That all that all flushed down
The refuse. Done? It lives in me.
You live in me. Malignant.
Love, you ever want me, don’t.
I hate confessing this, but I often don't enjoy poetry. I read it because that's what literate people do, because I hope to learn to understand it better, because one of my friends is a poet. And I do understand some of Glück's poetry, the poems featured here being three. I like her shorter and more easily decoded poetry, where Penelope, Telemachus, Circe, and Odysseus, for example, help us understand contemporary problems, as in this fragment from Circe's Power (1996):
I never turned anyone into a pig.
Some people are pigs; I make them
look like pigs.
I’m sick of your world
that lets the outside disguise the inside.
But some poems use metaphors that I don't follow. Glück's longer poems, several pages long, are often more obscure and my eyes wandered.
But, after I read several poems and moved to whatever else I was reading, I liked the way my mind reformatted that novel into free verse, how I found music and rhythm that I otherwise would miss.
I liked the way that everything became poetry.
October 31, 2020
Sneak peek din articolul despre miile de contorsiuni afective făcute de Louise Glück și câteva poeme traduse de mine:
Memoir
M-am născut precaută, sub semnul Taurului.
Am crescut pe o insulă, prosper,
în a doua jumătate a secolului al douăzecilea,
umbra Holocaustului
abia ne-a atins.
Credeam într-o filosofie a dragostei, o filosofie
a religiei, amândouă susținute de
experiența timpurie dintr-o familie.
Dacă atunci când scriam foloseam doar câteva cuvinte
se întâmpla pentru că timpul părea mereu
scurt
de parcă ar fi putut fi îndepărtat
în orice clipă.
În orice caz, povestea mea nu era unică
deși, ca oricine altcineva, aveam o poveste,
un punct de vedere.
Îmi trebuiau doar câteva cuvinte:
hrănește, susține, atacă.
Parodos
Demult, am fost rănită.
am învățat
să trăiesc prin reacții
îndepărtată
de lume: îți voi spune
ce am vrut să fiu
o mașinărie care să asculte
Nu inertă, ci liniștită.
O bucată de lemn. O piatră.
De ce să mă obosesc cu discuțiile și disputele?
Oamenii care respirau în celelalte așternuturi
abia mă puteau urmări, fiind
de necontrolat
ca orice vis
Am urmărit printre storuri
luna pe cerul înstelat, micșorându-se și umflându-se.
M-am născut cu o vocație:
să fiu martora
marilor mistere.
Acum că am văzut
și nașterea și moartea, știu
că pentru natura întunecată acestea
sunt dovezi, nu
mistere.
Scrisorile
E noapte pentru ultima oară.
Pentru ultima oară mâinile tale
se strâng pe corpul meu.
Mâine va fi toamnă
Vom sta împreună pe balcon
privind cum frunzele uscate plutesc deasupra orașului
ca scrisorile pe care le vom arde,
una câte una, fiecare în casa lui.
Ce noapte liniștită.
Doar vocea ta șoptește
Ești udă, vrei să
copilul doarme
de parcă nu s-ar fi născut.
Dimineață va fi toamnă.
Ne vom plimba împreună prin părculeț
printre bănci de piatră și tufișuri
încă acoperite de negură
ca mobila abandonată de mult timp.
Uite cum plutesc frunzele în întuneric.
Am mistuit
tot ce era scris pe ele.
https://citestema.ro/lumini-si-umbre-...
Memoir
M-am născut precaută, sub semnul Taurului.
Am crescut pe o insulă, prosper,
în a doua jumătate a secolului al douăzecilea,
umbra Holocaustului
abia ne-a atins.
Credeam într-o filosofie a dragostei, o filosofie
a religiei, amândouă susținute de
experiența timpurie dintr-o familie.
Dacă atunci când scriam foloseam doar câteva cuvinte
se întâmpla pentru că timpul părea mereu
scurt
de parcă ar fi putut fi îndepărtat
în orice clipă.
În orice caz, povestea mea nu era unică
deși, ca oricine altcineva, aveam o poveste,
un punct de vedere.
Îmi trebuiau doar câteva cuvinte:
hrănește, susține, atacă.
Parodos
Demult, am fost rănită.
am învățat
să trăiesc prin reacții
îndepărtată
de lume: îți voi spune
ce am vrut să fiu
o mașinărie care să asculte
Nu inertă, ci liniștită.
O bucată de lemn. O piatră.
De ce să mă obosesc cu discuțiile și disputele?
Oamenii care respirau în celelalte așternuturi
abia mă puteau urmări, fiind
de necontrolat
ca orice vis
Am urmărit printre storuri
luna pe cerul înstelat, micșorându-se și umflându-se.
M-am născut cu o vocație:
să fiu martora
marilor mistere.
Acum că am văzut
și nașterea și moartea, știu
că pentru natura întunecată acestea
sunt dovezi, nu
mistere.
Scrisorile
E noapte pentru ultima oară.
Pentru ultima oară mâinile tale
se strâng pe corpul meu.
Mâine va fi toamnă
Vom sta împreună pe balcon
privind cum frunzele uscate plutesc deasupra orașului
ca scrisorile pe care le vom arde,
una câte una, fiecare în casa lui.
Ce noapte liniștită.
Doar vocea ta șoptește
Ești udă, vrei să
copilul doarme
de parcă nu s-ar fi născut.
Dimineață va fi toamnă.
Ne vom plimba împreună prin părculeț
printre bănci de piatră și tufișuri
încă acoperite de negură
ca mobila abandonată de mult timp.
Uite cum plutesc frunzele în întuneric.
Am mistuit
tot ce era scris pe ele.
https://citestema.ro/lumini-si-umbre-...
June 1, 2022
"We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory."
February 2, 2022
I'm not entirely sure about Gluck - on the one hand, the poems are so exquisite they seem like miracles and rank highly among the best poems I've ever read, on the other hand, they seem very limited in form and content (although more varied than Mary Oliver). She's a better writer than Oliver, and her poetry is much more interesting. It's finely and beautifully crafted, and like the very best writers, it hardly seems like you can change a word of it. And yet often, I feel like I'm not "getting enough" out of the poem, that it should be stirring me a little more, eliciting more complex emotions. Still, she's better than pretty much everyone from my "Postmodern" collection - I feel like poetry with her has become meaningful and relevant again.
Here's a good sample poem which captures her pretty well. Note that she doesn't use complicated words, or strained structure, and yet the syntax, line breaks, stylistically it's quite incredible (to me as a poet anyway). If I could write poems a tenth as good as this I'd be happy. This also kind of captures my one complaint though, that she doesn't explore as much as she might.
The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
Here's a good sample poem which captures her pretty well. Note that she doesn't use complicated words, or strained structure, and yet the syntax, line breaks, stylistically it's quite incredible (to me as a poet anyway). If I could write poems a tenth as good as this I'd be happy. This also kind of captures my one complaint though, that she doesn't explore as much as she might.
The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
July 12, 2014
I haven't finished this book and probably never will. I wanted to reread her early books--which I had found good in the '70s and '80s--and at least try to read some of the later work, most of which I hadn't previously read and had found "lame" when browsed/looked at. I still find many of the early poems good, though by the time of Triumph of Achilles the chatty self-obsession was present, a fact I hadn't noted before. I've read some or all of three or four of the books after Triumph, and they are not worth much: typical contemporary auto-psychoanalysis, perhaps slightly more sharply written than most. Ararat is easy to read, fairly direct, not off-putting--but also not distinctive or necessary. Wild Iris almost repelled me--I mean that literally, the way two negative or two positive poles of magnets repel each other: both solipsistic and couched in distractingly abstracted "flower" language. I hope that no one, in 1980, would've predicted the way Gluck's career has gone in the past 30 years, a dramatic fall, a discouraging failure.
January 5, 2020
I read this in 2019 along with the complete collecteds of Octavio Paz and TS Eliot (a re-read for Eliot). I'm going ahead and giving this 5 stars because much of the writing is strong, but as a body of work, it's not up to those two. Might be a personal preference--I like work that takes on history, global themes, language, politics, the search for meaning... I'm less concerned (though not entirely uninterested in) with family and affairs and such. Esp since this collection has such emotional remove for the most part, it seems as if she too is uninterested.
In general, Gluck's generation--my mother's generation or just a bit younger--bores the snot out of me. I know it's not fair, but you just kind of want to smack them and say stand the fuck up.
I am trying to read AS Byatt's A Whistling Women, and the female characters trying to find their way during this same time period, as with Nadine Gordimer's Martha Quest lineup---snore. It's like reading in depth about steam engines or something. Life before the obvious was obvious.
Gluck starts out with the same stiffness Plath initially tied herself to--flowers, gardens, blech--but eventually branches out. There are some lovely moments... hence the 5 stars.
The druggeed Long Island summer sun drains
Pattern from those empty sleeves, beyond my grandson
Squealing in his pen. I have survived my life.
--from Grandmother in the Garden
Of two sisters,
one is always the watcher,
one the dancer.
--from Tango
because a woman's body
is a grave; it will accept
anything.
--from Dedication to Hunger
...nakedness in women is always a pose.
--from Marathon
Like Adam,
I was the firstborn.
Believe me, you never heal,
you never forget the ache in your side,
the place where something was taken away
to make another person
--from Paradise
I met my live under an orange tree
or was it an acacia tree
or was he not my love?
--from Castile
To get born, your body makes a pact with death,
and from that moment, all it tries to do is cheat--
--from A Slip of Paper
In general, Gluck's generation--my mother's generation or just a bit younger--bores the snot out of me. I know it's not fair, but you just kind of want to smack them and say stand the fuck up.
I am trying to read AS Byatt's A Whistling Women, and the female characters trying to find their way during this same time period, as with Nadine Gordimer's Martha Quest lineup---snore. It's like reading in depth about steam engines or something. Life before the obvious was obvious.
Gluck starts out with the same stiffness Plath initially tied herself to--flowers, gardens, blech--but eventually branches out. There are some lovely moments... hence the 5 stars.
The druggeed Long Island summer sun drains
Pattern from those empty sleeves, beyond my grandson
Squealing in his pen. I have survived my life.
--from Grandmother in the Garden
Of two sisters,
one is always the watcher,
one the dancer.
--from Tango
because a woman's body
is a grave; it will accept
anything.
--from Dedication to Hunger
...nakedness in women is always a pose.
--from Marathon
Like Adam,
I was the firstborn.
Believe me, you never heal,
you never forget the ache in your side,
the place where something was taken away
to make another person
--from Paradise
I met my live under an orange tree
or was it an acacia tree
or was he not my love?
--from Castile
To get born, your body makes a pact with death,
and from that moment, all it tries to do is cheat--
--from A Slip of Paper
June 22, 2013
It's somehow overwhelming to have them all here, something like eleven books in the course of one career, without foreword or introduction or comment, one after another, front to back. One is tempted to read from the center out in both directions, which is what I did. I've loved all her books individually. Something is lost in an omnibus like this--some kind of organizing principle, or perhaps a simple intimacy. It's too heavy in the hand.
Update: Yesterday, Louise Gluck was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, of which I am very glad and strongly approve. (In recent years I have not put much stock in Nobel Literature prizes, but this year's award was well done.) Did I neglect to say in my review above that you should read all her books of poetry? Well, you should because she is very good, and her poetry will inspire you. I rated her omnibus four stars, but her separate books are each worthy of five. I admire her poetry as much as Mary Oliver's. Someone wrote the other day that Louise Gluck's poems are "non-confessional." I agree with that. I don't care much for the confessional kind. I'm going to ineptly distinguish Gluck's and Oliver's, but I would say Oliver's concern the poet in her external environment, and Gluck's are just a bit more internal and deal more with relationships. Yes, that's not very satisfying but, like I said, inept.
Update: Yesterday, Louise Gluck was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, of which I am very glad and strongly approve. (In recent years I have not put much stock in Nobel Literature prizes, but this year's award was well done.) Did I neglect to say in my review above that you should read all her books of poetry? Well, you should because she is very good, and her poetry will inspire you. I rated her omnibus four stars, but her separate books are each worthy of five. I admire her poetry as much as Mary Oliver's. Someone wrote the other day that Louise Gluck's poems are "non-confessional." I agree with that. I don't care much for the confessional kind. I'm going to ineptly distinguish Gluck's and Oliver's, but I would say Oliver's concern the poet in her external environment, and Gluck's are just a bit more internal and deal more with relationships. Yes, that's not very satisfying but, like I said, inept.
February 20, 2017
I read and read and re-read Louise Gluck since discovering her through the Hamilton Public Library sometime in 2005. Her poetry just blows me away, a many-layered onion that smells more like a rose. hahahaha Yeah, I love Weezy Gluck.
The first poem I ever read by Gluck was "Gretel In Darkness":
This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch's cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas . . .
Now, far from women's arms
and memory of women, in our father's hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.
No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln--
Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel,
we are there still and it is real, real,
that black forest and the fire in earnest.
I can actually see my copy of this collection on the shelf from where I'm sitting, and it's giving me the warm fuzzies.
The first poem I ever read by Gluck was "Gretel In Darkness":
This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch's cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas . . .
Now, far from women's arms
and memory of women, in our father's hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.
No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln--
Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel,
we are there still and it is real, real,
that black forest and the fire in earnest.
I can actually see my copy of this collection on the shelf from where I'm sitting, and it's giving me the warm fuzzies.
January 29, 2013
Here's Louise Gluck in all her majesty. From the early individualisms to the classical tropes to Homer in New Jersey to the life of a village, she writes a poetry representing all humanity. Whether written in the voices of the residents of a provincial village or the modern voices of a New Jersey family reliving the tensions of the Odyssey, these are poems spoken by man. Even in the poems about the gods, these are the stories of man. Each of her eleven books is a themed work. Besides Homer here's Dante in a new Vita Nova, here's Shakespeare in a new vision of the seven ages of man, here, in Averno, is the classical story of Persephone in hell told for our new century. Each of the eleven books, sections spanning 50 years, is a brilliant narrative of life.
October 24, 2022
It's truly something to read a Nobel prize winner's entire collection. It was a great experience reading this from cover to cover.
December 16, 2025
a really great collection of poetry. I am a very big fan of the Greek mythology themed ones!
September 5, 2019
Two stars because there were a few phrases, a small handful of moments, that stopped my breath for a moment. The way poetry does.
August 10, 2026
officially my GOAT
April 5, 2021
I'll admit that what attracted me to it is what also made it a fitting Nobel winner for our time. Here she is, our finest Instagram poet.
June 14, 2024
Yeah, Glück deserved the nobel prize. These poems are gorgeous, unpretentious, honest, and many other good things.
November 4, 2026
whole summer and autumn spent with gluck and i couldnt have been more satisfied. feel blessed that i'll forever have this by my bedside to flip thru whenever i want
January 7, 2026
so fabulous. i loved that with the collections arranged chronologically, as each one went by it was clear how her craft developed over time and her foci evolved. by the time i got to a village life the volume cohered so incredibly well and the tone was pitch perfect on every line.
December 12, 2020
En su conjunto, 3.5.
En una antología generosa, con unos tres libros íntegros y otros bien seleccionados, el cinco seguro.
En una antología generosa, con unos tres libros íntegros y otros bien seleccionados, el cinco seguro.
September 30, 2024
627 pages of Glück wonder. Brained is GLÜCKED. Glück Glück Glück Glück Glück Glück
Studying for my MFA exam will kill me but alas, Glück
Studying for my MFA exam will kill me but alas, Glück
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