As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory."
Louise Glück (1943–2023) was an American poet. Born and raised in New York City, she was exposed to stories of myth and legend from a young age. She began publishing poems in her college years, eventually leaving to become a writer fulltime. Her first collection of poems, Firstborn, was published in 1968, and she has released several collections since, often inspired by personal losses and hardships. Common themes in her poetry are grief, trauma, and memory, mixed often with themes from nature, mythology, and her personal memories.
Glück was a multi-awarded poet, winning among other things the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (in 1993, for The Wild Iris) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 2020). She was named the US Poet Laureate for the year of 2003–2004.
Fun fact: her father Daniel and uncle Sundel Doniger are credited as the inventors of the X-Acto knife. Actress Abigail Savage is her niece.
Glück passed away on October 13, 2023.
Bibliography:
- Firstborn (1968)
- The House on Marshland (1975)
- Descending Figure (1980)
- The Triumph of Achilles (1985)
- Ararat (1990)
- The Wild Iris (1992)
- Meadowlands (1997)
- Vita Nova (1999)
- The Seven Ages (2001)
- Averno (2006)
- A Village Life (2009)
- Poems: 1926-2012 (2012)
- Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014)
- Winter Recipes from the Collective (2021)
Tropes in her works:
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Invoked in "Persephone the Wanderer", about the myth of Hades and Persephone. The poem touches on the various interpretations of Persephone and her agency through the centuries, and the author questions how she feels with her present arrangement. Is she unhappy in the house of Hades? Does she miss her mother? Have her actions all along been understandable?
- Death of a Child: "The Drowned Children" describes a moribund visual: children freezing to death in an icy lake.
- Foil: "Saints" contrasts the lives of Glück's grandmother and aunt, her family's titular "saints": while the former was "cautious and conservative" and lived a quiet life, the latter was more spiritual and rebellious, and thus suffered more.
- Flower Motifs: The collection The Wild Iris is themed around various garden flowers throughout the seasons, and Glück mixes their visuals with various emotional themes like longing, mystery, and death. For example, "The Silver Lily" is about accepting death, and the eponymous poem is about what comes after.
- The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Implied in "Tango": two sisters close in age, one more outgoing and closer to their parents, the other a "shadow", and who have had a tense relationship for some time ("the need to hurt binds you to your partner")."Of two sisters
one is always the watcher,
one the dancer." - If I Wanted You Dead...: Variation in "Circe's Power", where the titular sorceress accepts Odysseus's departure. If she really wanted to keep him around, his agency be damned, she could have done so magically."Every sorceress is
A pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't
Face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you
I could hold you prisoner." - Like an Old Married Couple: "Parable of the Swans", where she tells a story of a pair of swans, and explicitly compares it to bumps real-life couples experience. The male swan becomes engrossed with swimming in dirty water, to the distaste of the female swan. But nevertheless, they learn to live with it despite their bickering:..."On the muddy water
they bickered awhile, in the fading light,
until the bickering grew
slowly abstract, becoming
part of their song
after a little longer." - Mark of Shame: Discussed in "Persephone the Wanderer", where Persephone, returning after Hades's rapenote , is "stained with red juice like a character in Hawthorne".
- The Mourning After: "The Triumph of Achilles" suggests that although he may be about to deal Troy a crushing blow and go down in history for it, Achilles will never recover from Patroclus's death."In his tent, Achilles
grieved with his whole being
and the gods saw
he was a man already dead, a victim
of the part that loved,
the part that was mortal." - So What Do We Do Now?: "Parable of the Greeks" posits that after winning the Trojan War, the Greek soldiers felt adrift and derived of purpose, and that they would forever miss the thrills they had in Troy.
