Hello Gentle Reader,
Louise Glück was one of the most singular and original poets of contemporary English language poetry, a poet whose work was unified and complete, revolting against the notion of miscellany or collected scraps. Each of Louise Glück’s poetry had a sense of concrete or togetherness about them, a sense of unity not just in form, but in narrative, preoccupation, crafting beautiful poetry collections of marvelous sequences. Louise Glück was an unapologetic lyrical poet, one who swore no allegiance to any school, movement, or theory. Glück’s poetry strived for continued absolute clarity, one which severed and trimmed sentimentality and kitsch modes of expressions of disingenuity. This clarity was also regarded for its austerity. Pristine and picked clean, but unmistakably examined and exactingly staged and displayed. Louise Glück was a poet whose work examined, dissected, cut open and burrowed into otherwise eternal preoccupations of the human condition but also of personal matters, such as trauma and intimate relationships either with parents and siblings, or the dissolution of a marriage. These otherwise personal narratives had critics referring to Louise Glück as a confessional poet, but they couldn’t have been more wrong in their categorization. Glück’s poetry lacks the emotive frills, the titillating exhibitionist strip tease and final self-immolating cleanse. Louise Glück was far more chameleonic even impersonable, employing and embodying myths and botanical perspectives to refract and reflet on the topics in which Glück mulled over; but what was always enduring was the unmistakable poetic voice, both personal in its intensity, but crystallinity disseminated without ceremony. A poem often referenced by critics as having the distinct Glück touch is “All Hallows,” with the placid imagery of an otherwise rural landscape in autumn. Glück describes the arrival of dusk with the image of darkening hills and oxen asleep; the fields are picked clean either by harvest or pestilence; while a toothed moon rises. The poems jagged, sharpened edges, poke and prick throughout the poem, but soothes in the end, when a woman extends a hand of golden seeds as offering, calling out into the darkened evening for the soul. The distinct mournful voice, the jagged and serrated imagery, are all hallmarks of Louise Glück’s poetry, but take note of the season, and how landscape and nature are prevalent through the poem. “The Wild Iris,” is regarded as one of Louise Glück’s masterpieces of poetry, a poetic cycle that ruminates on the existential dramas of human nature and life through three very distinct voices, the God, the gardener, and the flowers of the garden, each one adding their voice to the chorus. The poem “Snowdrops,” is featured on the Nobel Prize website, but displays Glück’s unique poetic voice embodied by a fictional character, whereby the titular snowdrops remark with anxious surprise that they revived and return as winter recedes. Louise Glück is truly the October Poet, while looking outside as the day is bathed in grey light, the sky swaddled in impenetrable grey and white clouds, but the trees remain alight and aflame with a brilliance of autumnal colours of yellow and orange, while roads and lawns are carpeted in brown leaves, and some trees eager or windswept, have all but shed their leaves for the season. October is a month of ripeness and lengthened shadows, but also the last swansong before winters arrival, when the world comes alight once more, in a moment of renewed ripened life.
Sadly, Louise Glück died today (October 13 2023) at the age of 80. She was a remarkable poet, whose adherence to personal lyrical form ensured she had a rich and rewarding career, having won both the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the National Book Award, and was the United States Poet Laureate, in 2020 Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Beyond poetry, Louise Glück was an accomplished professor and lecturer or poetry.
Rest in Peace, Louise Glück.
Thank you For Reading Gentle
Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
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