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Louise Glück: Reading her, you get the feeling that her struggle is your struggle, that she somehow knows how it is for you.
By
Published: Oct 15, 2023
Category:
Poetry
Louise Glück — it’s pronounced “Glick”— died. Large obit in The Times. Big Butler review for her last book of poems. She won the Nobel Prize for Poetry. She was “unprepared…. I come from a country that is not thought fondly of now, and I’m white, and we’ve had all the prizes. So it seemed to be extremely unlikely that I would ever have this particular event to deal with in my life.” Yes, yes, but what did she think about the Prize? “Most of what I have to say of any real urgency comes out in poems, and the rest is just entertainment.”
The last line is just so Louise Glück. She teaches, she is sociable, but her life is all about poetry. Obviously, the poetry is remarkable. Less obviously, it appeals equally to literary types and to civilians. She’s deep, but easy to read. Her themes are personal, yet universal. Reading her, you get the feeling that her struggle is your struggle, that she somehow knows how it is for you.
Dan Chiasson, in The New Yorker, sums her up nicely.
If you want to know what it’s like to fall in love, to have an abortion, to have a child, to be seriously ill, to get divorced, to shop for cheese, to weed, to plant, to grieve for your parents and teachers: you can find it in Glück’s work. Her poems are anathema to easy comfort, and often seem to ban or forbid the going and conventional emotional logic. And yet people read them to know the contours of their own inner lives.
For example, “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson.”
Spiked sun. The Hudson’s
Whittled down by ice.
I hear the bone dice
Of blown gravel clicking. Bone-
pale, the recent snow
Fastens like fur to the river.
Standstill. We were leaving to deliver
Christmas presents when the tire blew
Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared
Down by a storm stood, limbs bared . . .
I want you.
For example, “Crossroads” (start at 00:55):
Her life in brief: She was raised on Long Island by parents who read poetry and mythology to her. A sister died before she was born: “Her death was not my experience, but her absence was. Her death let me be born.” In adolescence, she developed acute anorexia. When she dropped below 90 pounds, she knew she needed help: an institution and psychoanalysis. “First Memory” is about her father; her real rebellion was against her mother.
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.
Poetry saved her. Which is not to say she wrote easily, or often. Watch a video. A large volume, “Poems 1962-2012,” was published a few years ago. [The hardcover and paperback are unaffordable. To buy the Kindle edition, click here.]
More recently, she published a slim volume, “Faithful and Virtuous Night.” [Again, bound books are extravagantly expensive. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
I know just enough about poetry to place Louise Glück in the great chain of poets. That would be an utterly pointless exercise. You have only to read her to know how her themes – love, hope, age, death, the body, and yes, sex — connect with what you know, what you’ve been thinking, and what you haven’t yet thought. So let me get out of the way. Louise Glück can win her own game.
The Drowned Children
You see, they have no judgment.
So it is natural that they should drown,
first the ice taking them in
and then, all winter, their wool scarves
floating behind them as they sink
until at last they are quiet.
And the pond lifts them in its manifold dark arms.
But death must come to them differently,
so close to the beginning.
As though they had always been
blind and weightless. Therefore
the rest is dreamed, the lamp,
the good white cloth that covered the table,
their bodies.
And yet they hear the names they used
like lures slipping over the pond:
What are you waiting for
come home, come home, lost
in the waters, blue and permanent.
The Red Poppy
The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.
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.
Anniversary
I said you could snuggle. That doesn’t mean
your cold feet all over my dick.
Someone should teach you how to act in bed.
What I think is you should
keep your extremities to yourself.
Look what you did—
you made the cat move.
But I didn’t want your hand there.
I wanted your hand here.
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.
