Poetry Matters: On the Occasion of the Canonization of Louise Glück

 

Louise Glück is the 2020 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. When I read the news of the announcement, I rushed to my phone to share the news with Lisa Hiton and then I grabbed my copy of "Poems 1962-2012" to find an indelible Glück quote that framed the occasion. Below is an excerpt of what I ended up sending Lisa's way:

Aaron:

Three poems from “Ararat” “Labor Day,” “Widows,” and “Lost Love,” make a compelling case that family intimacy is best understood through the time slowing effects of cold. In “Labor Day” the funeral of a father is contrasted with the anniversary of the ever present reality of his death. The funeral was a public affair punctuated by “How hot it was for September. How unseasonable.” The death of the father, happens “This year, it’s cold/ There’s just us now, the immediate family.” The father’s death is a perpetual event frozen in time continually experienced by his family. In “Widows,” the narrator remarks, “Each player has one pile to the left, five cards in the hand. It's good/to stay inside on days like this, to stay where it's cool./And this is better than other games, better than solitaire.” “Each player” is a widow playing the final cards they have been dealt. The “good” space they have created for themselves in these twilight years is “cool” which seems to allow themselves to be together rather than suffer this time alone. Finally, in “Lost Love,” the narrator says, “when my sister died/ my mother’s heart became/ very cold, very rigid, / like a pendant of iron// Then it seemed to me my sister’s body / was a magnet. I could feel it draw my mother’s heart into the earth, /so that it could grow.” The chilling effect of losing a child stops this mother from placing her heart anywhere other than “into the earth” the timeless mother whom embraces us all. 

Aaron:

I was looking looking through “Poems 1962 - 2012” for a Glück quote to send and the marginalia suggest that I had to send that instead. 

While Glück is absolutely a quotable poet, I encounter her genius most vividly in the pastoral tapestries that she weaves across poems and collections. If you're thinking about which collection you should start with my recommendation is to read her entire body work so that you are well equipped to quote the emotional vocabulary that Glück's poetry has created.