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Poems, 1962-2020
A major career-spanning collection from the inimitable Nobel Prize-winning poet
For the past fifty years, Louise Glück has been a major force in modern poetry, distinguished as much for the restless intelligence, wit and intimacy of her poetic voice as for her development of a particular form: the book-length sequence of poems. This volume brings together the twelve collections Glück has published to date, offering readers the opportunity to become immersed in the artistry and vision of one of the world's greatest living poets.
From the allegories of The Wild Iris to the myth-making of Averno; the oneiric landscapes of The House on Marshland to the questing of Faithful and Virtuous Night - each of Glück's collections looks upon the events of an ordinary life and finds within them scope for the transcendent; each wields its archetypes to puncture the illusions of the self. Across her work, elements are reiterated but endlessly transfigured - 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. Taken together, the effect is like a shifting landscape seen from above, at once familiar and unspeakably profound.
For the past fifty years, Louise Glück has been a major force in modern poetry, distinguished as much for the restless intelligence, wit and intimacy of her poetic voice as for her development of a particular form: the book-length sequence of poems. This volume brings together the twelve collections Glück has published to date, offering readers the opportunity to become immersed in the artistry and vision of one of the world's greatest living poets.
From the allegories of The Wild Iris to the myth-making of Averno; the oneiric landscapes of The House on Marshland to the questing of Faithful and Virtuous Night - each of Glück's collections looks upon the events of an ordinary life and finds within them scope for the transcendent; each wields its archetypes to puncture the illusions of the self. Across her work, elements are reiterated but endlessly transfigured - 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. Taken together, the effect is like a shifting landscape seen from above, at once familiar and unspeakably profound.
720 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
191 people are currently reading
1004 people want to read
About the author
Louise Glück
96 books2,173 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 54 reviews
November 2, 2022
And if you missed a day, there
was always the next, and if you
missed a year, it didn't matter, the
hills weren't going anywhere, the
thyme and rosemary kept coming
back, the sun kept rising, the
bushes kept bearing fruit.
was always the next, and if you
missed a year, it didn't matter, the
hills weren't going anywhere, the
thyme and rosemary kept coming
back, the sun kept rising, the
bushes kept bearing fruit.
Read
August 17, 2022I would just like to take a moment to say I have now read the entire collected (sans pretty cover, for alcohol reasons) o my goodness
louise you are a diamond
louise you are a diamond
June 13, 2025
Čia tokia begalinio didumo knyga, kurią galima skaityti irgi begalybę. 12 jos poezijos rinkinių viename. Vis prie jos grįžtu, atsiverčiu (beveik kasdien) bent po vieną eilėraštį. Patinka man Louise Glück, jaučiu su ja giminystę. Visai ji nebijojo nieko rašydama, o tos eilės, kur daug atsiveria, tas atsivėrimas yra tokia taki ir reikalinga dalis eilėraščio kūno. Kai kuriuose jos eilėraščiuose tūno desperacija, bet man ji tokia dažniausiai “apgludinta”, neerzinanti. Louise turėjo tą talentą supinti viską kartu, suderinti tuos kontrastus (atsiranda kai kur ir švelnumo, ir to sapniškumo, kas man labai faina).
Pasidalinsiu bent porą, mano mėgstamų:
Telescope
There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you’ve been living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.
You’ve stopped being here in the world.
You’re in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning.
You’re not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.
Then you’re in the world again.
At night, on a cold hill,
taking the telescope apart.
You realize afterward
not that the image is false
but the relation is false.
You see again how far away
each thing is from every other thing.
Mother and child
We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are.
Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family.
Then back to the world, polished by soft whips.
We dream; we don’t remember.
Machine of the family: dark fur, forests of the mother’s body.
Machine of the mother: white city inside her.
And before that: earth and water.
Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass.
And before, cells in a great darkness.
And before that, the veiled world.
This is why you were born: to silence me.
Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn
to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece.
I improvised; I never remembered.
Now it’s your turn to be driven;
you’re the one who demands to know:
Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant?
Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us;
it is your turn to address it, to go back asking
what am I for? What am I for?
Šiaip man visada įdomu bent kiek pasidomėti autorių gyvenimu, jų rašymo procesu, dar kuo nors, taigi, vis susirandu kokį interviu. Ir su Louise jų tikrai yra! Patiko šitas, ypač šiti du užduoti klausimai, iš Henri Cole interviu the Paris Review.
In your books that move from despair to transcendence, does the divine play a role?
You could say that the divine is usually at the upper region of the vertical-axis books. In the dark lower region is human flailing—without the divine. Because I’m not a religious person, I would not use this word, divine. But I do think that there is the sense, in the upper regions, of having somehow been rescued and, at the bottom, a sense of having been abandoned.
(Ir tikrai taip jaučiasi, kad nemažoj daly jos eilėraščių pasakojami visokie tokie “žemiškieji” vargai (šeimos ryšiai, netektys, visokiausi prisiminimai), tuo pačiu, už to visko, už tų žemiškų reikalų, stovi ta didesnė jėga, viską stebinti, labai tas jaučiasi.)
Do you prefer to write from your dreams and unconscious <...> or to make things up? How do you choose? It’s not choose. Something presents itself and you have an instinct for what you can use, the way a bird building a nest knows, Oh, I need a little piece of red ribbon there, and then goes out searching for red ribbon, or the bird might not know that but see the red ribbon and think, Hmm, that has my name on it. You use what you come across, and you come across your dreams with regularity. I don’t sit at my desk and think, Now I will use something from my recent dream. It’s more like I wake up with a line and I write it down and I look at it, and it’s mysterious because the dream is mysterious—I don’t know what it means. Then I invent a context for it. Or I fail.
Man Louise Glück yra žmonių ir jų vidinių peizažų pasakotoja. Labai daug jautrumo, viską ji pastebėjo ir užrašė, viskas jos eilėraščiuose organiškai ir maloniai susipina. Labai mėgstama mano autorė.
Pasidalinsiu bent porą, mano mėgstamų:
Telescope
There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you’ve been living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.
You’ve stopped being here in the world.
You’re in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning.
You’re not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.
Then you’re in the world again.
At night, on a cold hill,
taking the telescope apart.
You realize afterward
not that the image is false
but the relation is false.
You see again how far away
each thing is from every other thing.
Mother and child
We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are.
Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family.
Then back to the world, polished by soft whips.
We dream; we don’t remember.
Machine of the family: dark fur, forests of the mother’s body.
Machine of the mother: white city inside her.
And before that: earth and water.
Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass.
And before, cells in a great darkness.
And before that, the veiled world.
This is why you were born: to silence me.
Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn
to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece.
I improvised; I never remembered.
Now it’s your turn to be driven;
you’re the one who demands to know:
Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant?
Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us;
it is your turn to address it, to go back asking
what am I for? What am I for?
Šiaip man visada įdomu bent kiek pasidomėti autorių gyvenimu, jų rašymo procesu, dar kuo nors, taigi, vis susirandu kokį interviu. Ir su Louise jų tikrai yra! Patiko šitas, ypač šiti du užduoti klausimai, iš Henri Cole interviu the Paris Review.
In your books that move from despair to transcendence, does the divine play a role?
You could say that the divine is usually at the upper region of the vertical-axis books. In the dark lower region is human flailing—without the divine. Because I’m not a religious person, I would not use this word, divine. But I do think that there is the sense, in the upper regions, of having somehow been rescued and, at the bottom, a sense of having been abandoned.
(Ir tikrai taip jaučiasi, kad nemažoj daly jos eilėraščių pasakojami visokie tokie “žemiškieji” vargai (šeimos ryšiai, netektys, visokiausi prisiminimai), tuo pačiu, už to visko, už tų žemiškų reikalų, stovi ta didesnė jėga, viską stebinti, labai tas jaučiasi.)
Do you prefer to write from your dreams and unconscious <...> or to make things up? How do you choose? It’s not choose. Something presents itself and you have an instinct for what you can use, the way a bird building a nest knows, Oh, I need a little piece of red ribbon there, and then goes out searching for red ribbon, or the bird might not know that but see the red ribbon and think, Hmm, that has my name on it. You use what you come across, and you come across your dreams with regularity. I don’t sit at my desk and think, Now I will use something from my recent dream. It’s more like I wake up with a line and I write it down and I look at it, and it’s mysterious because the dream is mysterious—I don’t know what it means. Then I invent a context for it. Or I fail.
Man Louise Glück yra žmonių ir jų vidinių peizažų pasakotoja. Labai daug jautrumo, viską ji pastebėjo ir užrašė, viskas jos eilėraščiuose organiškai ir maloniai susipina. Labai mėgstama mano autorė.
August 16, 2023
It is my mother's voice you hear
Or is it only the sound the trees make
When the air passes through them
Because what sound would it make,
Passing through nothing?
Or is it only the sound the trees make
When the air passes through them
Because what sound would it make,
Passing through nothing?
March 5, 2025
where do i even begin? this collection of poems is nearly 700 pages long and spans across 60 years of writing. that alone makes it a poetry collection entirely in its own league. some of it went completely over my head—a lot, actually, but that's what makes it so exciting, i already can't wait to return to this in 5 years, 10 years, 40 years, and see where it takes me then. the poems that i did understand were gorgeous and deeply impactful. i especially loved glücks takes on greek mythology, nature and child- and womanhood, as well as the trajectory of being a young person to an elderly who has to deal with the end coming closer and closer. i'm so grateful for art like this, what a magical thing it is.
my copy is absolutely painted in pen, but i'll try and pick some of my favorite lines:
'surely spring has returned to me, this time / not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet / it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.'
'the curtains parted. light / coming in. moonlight, then sunlight. / not changing because time was passing / but because one moment had many aspects.'
'how lush the world is, / how full of things that don't belong to me.'
'the extremes are easy. only / the middle is a puzzle. midsummer— / everything is possible.'
my copy is absolutely painted in pen, but i'll try and pick some of my favorite lines:
'surely spring has returned to me, this time / not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet / it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.'
'the curtains parted. light / coming in. moonlight, then sunlight. / not changing because time was passing / but because one moment had many aspects.'
'how lush the world is, / how full of things that don't belong to me.'
'the extremes are easy. only / the middle is a puzzle. midsummer— / everything is possible.'
July 4, 2025
"And it occurs to me that what is crucial is to believe
in effort, to believe some good will come of simply trying,
a good completely untainted by the corrupt initiating impulse
to persuade or seduce—
What are we without this?
Whirling in the dark universe,
alone, afraid, unable to influence fate—
What do we have really?
Sad tricks with ladders and shoes,
tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring
attempts to build character.
What do we have to appease the great forces?"
Avevo già letto alcune raccolte poetiche di Glück e mi erano piaciute ma non mi avevano pienamente conquistato; questa cosa è assolutamente cambiata dopo aver letto la sua intera produzione poetica racchiusa in questo volume.
È stato come affrontare un viaggio lungo e bellissimo alla scoperta dell'animo e dei pensieri più intimi di questa grande poetessa.
Versi profondamente toccanti e dalla grande forza evocativa che raccontano di solitudine, di desiderio, di connessione con la natura, di destino e della sua forza ineluttabile, di rapporti familiari difficili, di indentità frammentarie, di vecchiaia, di amicizia, di infanzia e così via.
Poche sono le esperienze di lettura che mi hanno lasciato così tanto a livello emozionale; sarà sicuramente un libro a cui tornerò più e più volte nel corso della mia vita e sono sicura che ci troverò ogni volta un verso, un passaggio o un'intera poesia che sarà proprio quello di cui avrò bisogno in quel momento.
in effort, to believe some good will come of simply trying,
a good completely untainted by the corrupt initiating impulse
to persuade or seduce—
What are we without this?
Whirling in the dark universe,
alone, afraid, unable to influence fate—
What do we have really?
Sad tricks with ladders and shoes,
tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring
attempts to build character.
What do we have to appease the great forces?"
Avevo già letto alcune raccolte poetiche di Glück e mi erano piaciute ma non mi avevano pienamente conquistato; questa cosa è assolutamente cambiata dopo aver letto la sua intera produzione poetica racchiusa in questo volume.
È stato come affrontare un viaggio lungo e bellissimo alla scoperta dell'animo e dei pensieri più intimi di questa grande poetessa.
Versi profondamente toccanti e dalla grande forza evocativa che raccontano di solitudine, di desiderio, di connessione con la natura, di destino e della sua forza ineluttabile, di rapporti familiari difficili, di indentità frammentarie, di vecchiaia, di amicizia, di infanzia e così via.
Poche sono le esperienze di lettura che mi hanno lasciato così tanto a livello emozionale; sarà sicuramente un libro a cui tornerò più e più volte nel corso della mia vita e sono sicura che ci troverò ogni volta un verso, un passaggio o un'intera poesia che sarà proprio quello di cui avrò bisogno in quel momento.
June 11, 2025
Formidable. Me abrazaré mucho a este libro en un futuro.
December 23, 2022
Sin duda este ha sido mi libro de poesía del año ♥️
August 3, 2023
disruptive on the mind, but oh so palatable on the tongue.
December 23, 2024
‘I feel its hunger / as your hand inside me’
‘her thighs cemented shut, barring / the fault in the rock’
‘I stood awhile in the dark, the cigarette glowing and growing small, each breath patiently destroying me. How small it was, how brief. Brief, brief, but inside me now, which the stars could never be.’
‘her thighs cemented shut, barring / the fault in the rock’
‘I stood awhile in the dark, the cigarette glowing and growing small, each breath patiently destroying me. How small it was, how brief. Brief, brief, but inside me now, which the stars could never be.’
November 4, 2023
I read this in honor of Louise Glück’s passing, really glad I did. This is over 600 pages of thoughtful, honest poetry. Some of the poems really hit a nerve, and some went completely over my head.
I loved her Greek mythology- and religion-inspired poems: good re-analyses of old stories and deep questions. I also loved other ones, ones with vivid imagery of nature, with themes of creation, seasonal repetition, womanhood and death.
A sample:
The Magi
Toward world’s end, through the bare
Beginnings of winter, they are traveling again.
How many winters have we seen it happen,
Watched the same sign come forward as they pass
Cities sprung around this route their gold
Engraved on the desert, and yet
Held our peace, these
Being the Wise, come to see at the accustomed hour
Nothing changed: roofs, the barn
Blazing in darkness, all they wish to see.
It is a lovely (underrated?) poem perfectly capable of standing on its own, but it also works as a response to ‘Journey of the Magi’ by TS Eliot. And there is Glück’s genius as I understand it. She seems to be in conversation with the dead and great ones, reshaping their meaning the female way as she goes along. Eliot’s Magi whine and Glück responds: but you created it this way. (I also would not be surprised if Madeline Miller took her inspiration for Circe from Glück’s poems; honestly, she must have).
4.5 instead of 5 stars because this is an anthology of her ‘best’ work, and apparently Glück’s poetry is better read as part of her original poetry books. There are themes and patterns, repetitions and a larger context that are important to understanding the individual poems that I wish I had known before venturing into this particular collection. If I were to do it over, I’d start with The Wild Iris probably.
I loved her Greek mythology- and religion-inspired poems: good re-analyses of old stories and deep questions. I also loved other ones, ones with vivid imagery of nature, with themes of creation, seasonal repetition, womanhood and death.
A sample:
The Magi
Toward world’s end, through the bare
Beginnings of winter, they are traveling again.
How many winters have we seen it happen,
Watched the same sign come forward as they pass
Cities sprung around this route their gold
Engraved on the desert, and yet
Held our peace, these
Being the Wise, come to see at the accustomed hour
Nothing changed: roofs, the barn
Blazing in darkness, all they wish to see.
It is a lovely (underrated?) poem perfectly capable of standing on its own, but it also works as a response to ‘Journey of the Magi’ by TS Eliot. And there is Glück’s genius as I understand it. She seems to be in conversation with the dead and great ones, reshaping their meaning the female way as she goes along. Eliot’s Magi whine and Glück responds: but you created it this way. (I also would not be surprised if Madeline Miller took her inspiration for Circe from Glück’s poems; honestly, she must have).
4.5 instead of 5 stars because this is an anthology of her ‘best’ work, and apparently Glück’s poetry is better read as part of her original poetry books. There are themes and patterns, repetitions and a larger context that are important to understanding the individual poems that I wish I had known before venturing into this particular collection. If I were to do it over, I’d start with The Wild Iris probably.
May 2, 2024
Gillade inte nödvändigtvis allt men hon va så så bra
December 1, 2024
I have been reading this collection intermittently since January 2023. I feel a great sense of achievement that I’ve finally got to the end of 690 pages of poetry by one person. Generally, I stick to ‘best-of’ collections; the only comparable amount of single-artist poetry I’ve read is Auden, and I admire Auden and like Auden much more than Gluck.
My issue – as a non-poet, casual reading civilian – is that this poetry style is very plain. I know that sounds very close to ‘it doesn’t even rhyme’, but a lot of modern poetry looks to me like flash fiction. There are some brilliant flashes and I’ve collated them below, but aside from Telemachus’ Detachment there’s nothing out of this I’m going to learn by heart (and I had already learned that by heart; it was the poem that prompted me to seek out the rest). There’s a ‘spark’ I look to feel when reading poetry that isn’t unlike a romantic spark, and, like a romantic spark, can sometimes be kindled by paying close attention and spending a lot of time with it. Sadly, I just don’t have the time (or energy, or attention, or incentive) to pore over poetry that doesn’t immediately grab me. And not much here did.
Plus, there's a lot of thematic focus on motherhood ... can't relate. I'll say this for male poetry, and male artistry in general, they could as a body have fathered one thousand million children and you almost never have to hear about it.
Telemachus’ Detachment though. What a poem.
Grandmother in the Garden:
“I have survived my life.”
Letter from Our Man in Blossomtime:
“I saw
Venus among those clamshells, raw
Botticelli: I have known no happiness so based in truth.”
Cottonmouth Country:
“Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.”
All Hallows:
“And the wife leaning out of the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree.”
Tango:
“[...] envy
is a dance, too; the need to hurt
binds you to your partner.”
Winter Morning:
“But the lesson that was needed
was another lesson.”
Baskets:
“I ask you, how much beauty
can a person bear? It is
heavier than ugliness, even the burden
of emptiness is nothing beside it.”
Marathon:
“When my lover touches me, what I feel in my body
is like the first movement of a glacier over the earth,
as the ice shifts, dislodging great boulders, hills
of solemn rock;”
“I need to wake you, to remind you that there isn’t a future.
That’s why we’re free.”
Day Without Night:
“Here is your path to god,
who has no name, whose hand
is invisible: a trick
of moonlight on the dark water.”
From the Japanese:
“Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love.”
“The brave are patient.
They are the priests of sunrise,
lions on the rampart, the promontory.”
Parados:
“I was born to a vocation:
to bear witness
to the great mysteries.
Now that I’ve seen both
birth and death, I know
to the dark nature these
are proofs, not
mysteries –”
Brown Circle:
“What i hated
was being a child,
having no choice about
what people I loved.”
Paradise:
“Believe me, you never heal
you never forget the ache in your side,
the palace where something was taken away
to make another person.”
Celestial Music:
“Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
like brides leaping to a great height –”
First Memory:
“in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.”
Love in Moonlight:
“Sometimes a man or woman forces his despair
on another person, which is called
baring the heart, alternatively, baring the soul –
meaning for this moment they acquired souls –”
Violets:
“in all your greatness knowing
nothing of the soul’s nature,
which is never to die: poor sad god,
either you never have one
or you never lose one.”
The Silver Lily:
“after the first cries,
doesn’t joy, like fear, make no sound?”
Anniversary:
“You should pay attention to my feet.
You should picture them
the next time you see a hot fifteen year old.
Because there’s a lot more where those feet come from.”
Nostos:
“We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.”
Descent to the Valley:
“The light of the pinnacle, the light that was,
theoretically, the goal of the climb,
proves to have been poignantly abstract;”
Lament:
“Clearly they know, they know. He is dying again,
and the world also. Dying the rest of my life,
so I believe.”
The Sensual World:
“Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.
Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.”
Solstice:
“Why should we be forced to remember:
it is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of the winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes genius to forget these things.”
Distance:
“The eyes, the hands – less crucial
than we believed. In the end
distance was sufficient, by itself.”
Summer Night:
“Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,
imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,
the dreamed as well as the lived –
what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?”
October:
“death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.”
A Myth of Innocence:
“She can’t remember herself as that person
but she keeps thinking the pool will remember
and explain to her the meaning of her prayer
so she can understand
whether it was answered or not.”
Omens:
“To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
making, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.”
Via Delle Ombre:
“He says moods don’t mean anything –
the shadows mean night is coming, not that daylight will never return.”
Olive Trees:
“But a person who accepts a lie, who accepts support from it
because it’s warm, it’s pleasant for a little while –
that person she’ll never understand, no matter how much she loves him.”
Faithful and Virtuous Night:
“It had occurred to me that all humans beings are divided
into those who wish to move forward
and those who wish to go back.
Or you could say, those who wish to keep moving
and those who want to be stopped in their tracks
by the blazing sword.”
“I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem
there is no perfect ending.
Indeed, there are infinite endings.
Or perhaps, once one begins,
there are only endings.”
Visitors from Abroad:
“Who would call in the middle of the night?
Trouble calls, despair calls.
Joy is sleeping like a baby.”
Favourite Poems:
The Racer’s Widow
Letter from Our Man in Blossomtime
Letter from Provence
The Slave Ship
Gretel in Darkness
Gratitude
Jeanne D’Arc
Pomegranate *
Abishag
Descending Figure
Epithalamium
Illuminations
The Gift
The Triumph of Achilles *
The End of the World
The Mountain *
A Fantasy *
A Novel
Confession
Daisies
Telemachus’ Detachment **
Descent to the Valley *
The Seven Ages
Fable
The Empty Glass
Dream of Lust
Prism
Crater Lake
A Myth of Innocence
Crossroads
Parable *
An Adventure
My issue – as a non-poet, casual reading civilian – is that this poetry style is very plain. I know that sounds very close to ‘it doesn’t even rhyme’, but a lot of modern poetry looks to me like flash fiction. There are some brilliant flashes and I’ve collated them below, but aside from Telemachus’ Detachment there’s nothing out of this I’m going to learn by heart (and I had already learned that by heart; it was the poem that prompted me to seek out the rest). There’s a ‘spark’ I look to feel when reading poetry that isn’t unlike a romantic spark, and, like a romantic spark, can sometimes be kindled by paying close attention and spending a lot of time with it. Sadly, I just don’t have the time (or energy, or attention, or incentive) to pore over poetry that doesn’t immediately grab me. And not much here did.
Plus, there's a lot of thematic focus on motherhood ... can't relate. I'll say this for male poetry, and male artistry in general, they could as a body have fathered one thousand million children and you almost never have to hear about it.
Telemachus’ Detachment though. What a poem.
Grandmother in the Garden:
“I have survived my life.”
Letter from Our Man in Blossomtime:
“I saw
Venus among those clamshells, raw
Botticelli: I have known no happiness so based in truth.”
Cottonmouth Country:
“Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.”
All Hallows:
“And the wife leaning out of the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree.”
Tango:
“[...] envy
is a dance, too; the need to hurt
binds you to your partner.”
Winter Morning:
“But the lesson that was needed
was another lesson.”
Baskets:
“I ask you, how much beauty
can a person bear? It is
heavier than ugliness, even the burden
of emptiness is nothing beside it.”
Marathon:
“When my lover touches me, what I feel in my body
is like the first movement of a glacier over the earth,
as the ice shifts, dislodging great boulders, hills
of solemn rock;”
“I need to wake you, to remind you that there isn’t a future.
That’s why we’re free.”
Day Without Night:
“Here is your path to god,
who has no name, whose hand
is invisible: a trick
of moonlight on the dark water.”
From the Japanese:
“Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love.”
“The brave are patient.
They are the priests of sunrise,
lions on the rampart, the promontory.”
Parados:
“I was born to a vocation:
to bear witness
to the great mysteries.
Now that I’ve seen both
birth and death, I know
to the dark nature these
are proofs, not
mysteries –”
Brown Circle:
“What i hated
was being a child,
having no choice about
what people I loved.”
Paradise:
“Believe me, you never heal
you never forget the ache in your side,
the palace where something was taken away
to make another person.”
Celestial Music:
“Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
like brides leaping to a great height –”
First Memory:
“in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.”
Love in Moonlight:
“Sometimes a man or woman forces his despair
on another person, which is called
baring the heart, alternatively, baring the soul –
meaning for this moment they acquired souls –”
Violets:
“in all your greatness knowing
nothing of the soul’s nature,
which is never to die: poor sad god,
either you never have one
or you never lose one.”
The Silver Lily:
“after the first cries,
doesn’t joy, like fear, make no sound?”
Anniversary:
“You should pay attention to my feet.
You should picture them
the next time you see a hot fifteen year old.
Because there’s a lot more where those feet come from.”
Nostos:
“We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.”
Descent to the Valley:
“The light of the pinnacle, the light that was,
theoretically, the goal of the climb,
proves to have been poignantly abstract;”
Lament:
“Clearly they know, they know. He is dying again,
and the world also. Dying the rest of my life,
so I believe.”
The Sensual World:
“Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.
Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.”
Solstice:
“Why should we be forced to remember:
it is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of the winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes genius to forget these things.”
Distance:
“The eyes, the hands – less crucial
than we believed. In the end
distance was sufficient, by itself.”
Summer Night:
“Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,
imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,
the dreamed as well as the lived –
what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?”
October:
“death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.”
A Myth of Innocence:
“She can’t remember herself as that person
but she keeps thinking the pool will remember
and explain to her the meaning of her prayer
so she can understand
whether it was answered or not.”
Omens:
“To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
making, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.”
Via Delle Ombre:
“He says moods don’t mean anything –
the shadows mean night is coming, not that daylight will never return.”
Olive Trees:
“But a person who accepts a lie, who accepts support from it
because it’s warm, it’s pleasant for a little while –
that person she’ll never understand, no matter how much she loves him.”
Faithful and Virtuous Night:
“It had occurred to me that all humans beings are divided
into those who wish to move forward
and those who wish to go back.
Or you could say, those who wish to keep moving
and those who want to be stopped in their tracks
by the blazing sword.”
“I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem
there is no perfect ending.
Indeed, there are infinite endings.
Or perhaps, once one begins,
there are only endings.”
Visitors from Abroad:
“Who would call in the middle of the night?
Trouble calls, despair calls.
Joy is sleeping like a baby.”
Favourite Poems:
The Racer’s Widow
Letter from Our Man in Blossomtime
Letter from Provence
The Slave Ship
Gretel in Darkness
Gratitude
Jeanne D’Arc
Pomegranate *
Abishag
Descending Figure
Epithalamium
Illuminations
The Gift
The Triumph of Achilles *
The End of the World
The Mountain *
A Fantasy *
A Novel
Confession
Daisies
Telemachus’ Detachment **
Descent to the Valley *
The Seven Ages
Fable
The Empty Glass
Dream of Lust
Prism
Crater Lake
A Myth of Innocence
Crossroads
Parable *
An Adventure
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 20, 2022
Loved it!
Each collection reviewed separately for better rating accuracy but on the whole this was magnificent.
Each collection reviewed separately for better rating accuracy but on the whole this was magnificent.
May 1, 2023
My favourite poet. 'You read a passage by Glück and think, Ah yes, of course, this is how it is' (Fiona Sampson, Guardian)
August 31, 2023
Is it possible for me to sum up Louise Glück's brilliance? I don't think so. So I won't try
Read
November 19, 2025Full disclosure: I have only read a few poems out of each "chapter", and some of the more famous ones, so all in all, maybe 20-30 of them.
I couldn't find my way into them.
Normally I like poetry, in a best case it really moves me.
Those, they left me calm. The only one I read, that I found somewhat touching was "First memory" - but after reflection it felt like a very obvious and not very original observation, how a lack of reciprocity of love between child and parent is a bummer - ok, hurts a lot for a child, and means said child will probably need therapy and still date morons for most of her life... sorry, I am being a bit flippant.
Maybe just because I am disappointed.
And I am also pedantic and grumpy, so when I read "solitude", I immediately thought "not true" about the line ""(...)rain, driving life underground." I thought of earthworms - they actually come to the surface when it rains. Probably no one else, but I just wanted to mention them - they are life too! Again, flippant, okay, okay.
I really wanted to find something in the poems, and especially "wild iris" left me at a loss.
I hope it is just because English is not my native language - there seems to be consensus that her poetry is masterful.
The poet who moved me most so far was actually Rainer Maria Rilke whom I read in German (my native language), but it is years ago, that I read his poems, so maybe I wouldn't like his writing now either...
Anyway. Might be a me problem, is what I want to say.
I couldn't find my way into them.
Normally I like poetry, in a best case it really moves me.
Those, they left me calm. The only one I read, that I found somewhat touching was "First memory" - but after reflection it felt like a very obvious and not very original observation, how a lack of reciprocity of love between child and parent is a bummer - ok, hurts a lot for a child, and means said child will probably need therapy and still date morons for most of her life... sorry, I am being a bit flippant.
Maybe just because I am disappointed.
And I am also pedantic and grumpy, so when I read "solitude", I immediately thought "not true" about the line ""(...)rain, driving life underground." I thought of earthworms - they actually come to the surface when it rains. Probably no one else, but I just wanted to mention them - they are life too! Again, flippant, okay, okay.
I really wanted to find something in the poems, and especially "wild iris" left me at a loss.
I hope it is just because English is not my native language - there seems to be consensus that her poetry is masterful.
The poet who moved me most so far was actually Rainer Maria Rilke whom I read in German (my native language), but it is years ago, that I read his poems, so maybe I wouldn't like his writing now either...
Anyway. Might be a me problem, is what I want to say.
February 25, 2024
3.5/3.75 stars. I took my time with this, the whole month. Chunky book, of course, as it is the collected poetry of sixty years. Very interesting experience. I didn't like the one collection I read before, the last, but I decided to give it another shot and I'm glad I did. Because even if I didn't find a new all-time favorite poet, I did find some new all-time favorite poems.
The poetry collections I liked the best were: The Triumph of Achilles (1985), Ararat (1990), Meadowlands (1996), The Seven Ages (2001), Averno (2006) and A Village Life (2009).
My favorite individual poems were: Metamorphosis, The Triumph of Achilles, Adult Grief (all from The Triumph of Achilles), A Novel, Confession, The Untrustworthy Speaker, Animals (all from Ararat), Telemachus' Detachment, Telemachus' Guilt, Circe's Power (all from Meadowlands), Radium, Ancient Text, The Empty Glass, Time, Saint Joan (all from The Seven Ages), October, Persephone the Wanderer, Averno (all from Averno), In the Cafe, A Corridor, Confession, Olive Trees (all from A Village Life)
The poetry collections I liked the best were: The Triumph of Achilles (1985), Ararat (1990), Meadowlands (1996), The Seven Ages (2001), Averno (2006) and A Village Life (2009).
My favorite individual poems were: Metamorphosis, The Triumph of Achilles, Adult Grief (all from The Triumph of Achilles), A Novel, Confession, The Untrustworthy Speaker, Animals (all from Ararat), Telemachus' Detachment, Telemachus' Guilt, Circe's Power (all from Meadowlands), Radium, Ancient Text, The Empty Glass, Time, Saint Joan (all from The Seven Ages), October, Persephone the Wanderer, Averno (all from Averno), In the Cafe, A Corridor, Confession, Olive Trees (all from A Village Life)
October 31, 2025
Poet of relentless, necessary darkness, with the grain of a grain of hope. And, yes, ‘warm’ and ‘warmth’ are phenomenal in her poems.
I open my fingers—
I let everything go.
Visual world, language,
rustling of leaves in the night,
smell of high grass, of woodsmoke.
I let it go, then I light the candle.
I open my fingers—
I let everything go.
Visual world, language,
rustling of leaves in the night,
smell of high grass, of woodsmoke.
I let it go, then I light the candle.
July 28, 2025
lido faz um tempo, mas ainda ecoa dentro de mim. a poesia de louise gluck é única. vez ou outra lembro de um verso e procuro o poema inteiro e identifico sentimentos que nunca conseguiria descrever em mim, mas sinto.
June 22, 2024
Sublime
January 16, 2025
A book that you could pick up intermittently throughout your life and be struck by something new and affecting each time. Just wowwwwww
September 17, 2025
a life like growing in the desert
December 31, 2024
poeta favoritísima<333333
April 28, 2023
I have to admit that, like many others I am sure, I hadn’t heard of Louise Glück until she was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature. She is one of only 5 or 6 poets writing in English to receive this honour. This puts her in very distinguished company. Three of the previous winners, Yeats, Eliot and Heaney, pretty much define English language poetry, on this side of the Atlantic at least. She is the only woman and arguably the only American (depending how you classify Eliot) in this group. And yet, she is almost unknown, even amongst people who read poetry.
I saw this book when it came out in hardback at the end of 2021 and bought it almost as soon as the paperback came out. Dipping in and out, I found that I didn’t understand what I was reading. I am part of a poetry appreciation group and kept suggesting that we should look at Glück’s work, in the hope that someone would explain it to me. Of course, I was given the job. (Of the group of more than 12, only three of us had heard of Glück and only one was at all familiar with her work.)
Starting with Glück’s own biography on the Nobel website, I then started reading her work in earnest. I found a few in some poetry anthologies and used them as the way in. Then I let the words speak for themselves.
Basically, I read one collection at a time, starting with Wild Iris and Averno and took it from there. There are 12 books in the collection and the last 8 are masterpieces. This is where her work changed from simply being the poems that she had written to that point to having a shared theme and for the poems to relate to each other.
And it was wonderful.
The first four books are less essential, particularly her early work opin Firstborn.
I saw this book when it came out in hardback at the end of 2021 and bought it almost as soon as the paperback came out. Dipping in and out, I found that I didn’t understand what I was reading. I am part of a poetry appreciation group and kept suggesting that we should look at Glück’s work, in the hope that someone would explain it to me. Of course, I was given the job. (Of the group of more than 12, only three of us had heard of Glück and only one was at all familiar with her work.)
Starting with Glück’s own biography on the Nobel website, I then started reading her work in earnest. I found a few in some poetry anthologies and used them as the way in. Then I let the words speak for themselves.
Basically, I read one collection at a time, starting with Wild Iris and Averno and took it from there. There are 12 books in the collection and the last 8 are masterpieces. This is where her work changed from simply being the poems that she had written to that point to having a shared theme and for the poems to relate to each other.
And it was wonderful.
The first four books are less essential, particularly her early work opin Firstborn.
Read
March 12, 2025You can watch full video review here: https://youtu.be/0rhdhYxSue4
Reading Louise’s poems like feeling stillness, calm, slow time and leaflessness. Penguin collected all her poetry volumes into one. Glück won the 2020 Nobel prize, with the judging committee citing her “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”. Louise Gluck could not have written her poems, had Emily Dickinson never existed as she confessed in her Nobel acceptance speech to having devoured Dickinson’s poetry in her teens, also “poems of intimate selection or collusion” by William Blake. She remembers childhood, her relationship with her mother, Father, the death of her sister and parents, the end of her marriage and old age with precision. She is the poet of the ‘soul’, ‘window’ to the inner and outer world, darkness, stars, rain, snow, sun, garden mountains, a field on fire. Mirror Image: Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother’s voice couldn’t make him change or turn back as he believed that once you can’t love another human being you have no place in the world. Glück is the author of 12 books of poems and two collections of essays, and has previously won the Pulitzer prize, the National Book Award, The Bollingen prize, the National Humanities medal and the gold medal for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Enjoy the book.
Reading Louise’s poems like feeling stillness, calm, slow time and leaflessness. Penguin collected all her poetry volumes into one. Glück won the 2020 Nobel prize, with the judging committee citing her “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”. Louise Gluck could not have written her poems, had Emily Dickinson never existed as she confessed in her Nobel acceptance speech to having devoured Dickinson’s poetry in her teens, also “poems of intimate selection or collusion” by William Blake. She remembers childhood, her relationship with her mother, Father, the death of her sister and parents, the end of her marriage and old age with precision. She is the poet of the ‘soul’, ‘window’ to the inner and outer world, darkness, stars, rain, snow, sun, garden mountains, a field on fire. Mirror Image: Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother’s voice couldn’t make him change or turn back as he believed that once you can’t love another human being you have no place in the world. Glück is the author of 12 books of poems and two collections of essays, and has previously won the Pulitzer prize, the National Book Award, The Bollingen prize, the National Humanities medal and the gold medal for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Enjoy the book.
physical-tbr
July 30, 2024poems poems poems galore
February 16, 2022
~He leído una compilación de poemas hecha por Poemhunter.com~
Creo que se ha convertido en mi poeta favorita junto con Elvira Sastre y Rupi Kaur y, sin duda, seguiré leyendo más poemarios suyos. He conectado con la mayoría de sus poemas y mi forma de escribir se asemeja bastante con la suya. Simplemente, su poesía es muy fresca, muy fácil de leer y de entender, innovando a nivel literario. Sus poemas son reflexivos y se basan principalmente en el pasado, bien en relación a la mitología griega o a momentos personales como relaciones de pareja o familiares.
Poemas que me han gustado: A Fable, A Myth of Devotion, Aboriginal Landcape, Castle, Celestial Music, Circe’s Grief, Circe’s Torment, Confession, Elms, Happiness, Hyacinth, Lullaby, Midsummer, Parable of Faith, Parable of the Dove, Parable of the Hostages, Parable of the Swans, Portrait, Snow, Summer, The Empty Glass, The Myth of Innocence, The Past, The Pond, The Triumph of Achilles.
Creo que se ha convertido en mi poeta favorita junto con Elvira Sastre y Rupi Kaur y, sin duda, seguiré leyendo más poemarios suyos. He conectado con la mayoría de sus poemas y mi forma de escribir se asemeja bastante con la suya. Simplemente, su poesía es muy fresca, muy fácil de leer y de entender, innovando a nivel literario. Sus poemas son reflexivos y se basan principalmente en el pasado, bien en relación a la mitología griega o a momentos personales como relaciones de pareja o familiares.
Poemas que me han gustado: A Fable, A Myth of Devotion, Aboriginal Landcape, Castle, Celestial Music, Circe’s Grief, Circe’s Torment, Confession, Elms, Happiness, Hyacinth, Lullaby, Midsummer, Parable of Faith, Parable of the Dove, Parable of the Hostages, Parable of the Swans, Portrait, Snow, Summer, The Empty Glass, The Myth of Innocence, The Past, The Pond, The Triumph of Achilles.
August 5, 2025
Brilliant. Such a fantastic collection of poems which, together, are far more than the sum of their parts (thought not to diminish the parts, which are themselves beautiful). The collection has the feel of a novel, with repeated themes and many returns to the same subjects and scenes over many decades.
My favourites: The lady in the single; Scraps; Gretel in darkness; The letters; Marathon; Summer; The reproach; From the Japanese; A fantasy; Appearances; Saints; The wild iris; Trillium; The garden; Parable of the hostages; Parable of the trellis; The rock; Nostos; Reunion; Otis; The wish; Lute song; Castile; Relic; Stars; Island; The balcony; Summer at the beach; Eros; Screened porch; Echoes; Telescope; Tributaries; Noon; At the river; A slip of paper; Olive trees; Theory of memory; The white series.
My favourites: The lady in the single; Scraps; Gretel in darkness; The letters; Marathon; Summer; The reproach; From the Japanese; A fantasy; Appearances; Saints; The wild iris; Trillium; The garden; Parable of the hostages; Parable of the trellis; The rock; Nostos; Reunion; Otis; The wish; Lute song; Castile; Relic; Stars; Island; The balcony; Summer at the beach; Eros; Screened porch; Echoes; Telescope; Tributaries; Noon; At the river; A slip of paper; Olive trees; Theory of memory; The white series.
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