Louise Gluck (1943-2023) born in New York City, raised on Long Island, married twice, one child Noah Dranow, who is a Sommelier. Her family was of Russian Jewish and Hungarian descent. Her father invented the x-acto knife. She had anorexia as a teen, an effort to assert independence from her mother. Seven years of psychotherapy helped her recover. She won many prizes for her poetry. She is an autobiographical poet. Thematically, her poems have illuminated aspects of trauma, desire, and nature. She went to Sarah Lawrence and Columbia but didn't get a degree. she studied with poets Léonie Adams and Stanley Kunitz. She worked as a secretary and published her first book of poems in 1968. She taught at Goddard College, Williams College, Boston College, University of North Carolina--Greensboro, Iowa Writers Workshop, Yale, and Stanford. She had a child and the relationship with Keith Monley lasted until he was 2. They didn't speak for 20 years, but later became friends. Then she married John Dranow (1977-1996). Her house in Vermont burned down. Her 6th collection The Wild Iris won the Pulitzer, she won the Nobel in 2020. In her lecture for the Nobel, she talked about the influence of William Blake and Emily Dickinson. She would also mention Rilke and Robert Lowell. Her papers are held at Yale University. She died in Cambridge Massachusetts of Cancer at age 80.
From Firstborn (1968)
Hesitate to Call
Lived to see you throwing
Me aside. That fought
Like netted fish inside me. Saw you throbbing
In my syrups. Saw you sleep. And lived to see
That all. That all flushed down
The refuse. Done?
It lives in me.
You live in me. Malignant.
Love, you ever want me, don’t.
Returning a Lost Child
Nothing moves. In its cage, the broken
Blossom of a fan sways
Limply, trickling its wire, as her thin
Arms, hung like flypaper, twist about the boy…
Later, blocking the doorway, tongue
Pinned to the fat wedge of his pop, he watches
As I find the other room, the father strung
On crutches, waiting to be roused…
Now squeezed from thanks the woman’s lemonade lies
In my cup. As endlessly she picks
Her spent kleenex into dust, always
Staring at that man, hearing the click,
Click of his brain’s whirling empty spindle…
From The House on Marshland (1976)
The Pond
Night covers the pond with its wing.
Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows and the small
echoing stars. In the night air
the surface of the pond is metal.
Within, your eyes are open. They contain
a memory I recognize, as though
we had been children together. Our ponies
grazed on the hill, they were gray
with white markings. Now they graze
with the dead who wait
like children under their granite breastplates,
lucid and helpless:
The hills are far away. They rise up
blacker than childhood.
What do you think of, lying so quietly
by the water? When you look that way I want
to touch you, but do not, seeing
as in another life we were of the same blood.
Gratitude
Do not think I am not grateful for your small
kindness to me.
I like small kindnesses.
In fact I actually prefer them to the more
substantial kindness, that is always eying you
like a large animal on a rug,
until your whole life reduces
to nothing but waking up morning after morning
cramped, and the bright sun shining on its tusks.
Brennende Liebe
—1904
Dearest love: The roses are in bloom again,
cream and rose, to either side of the brick walk.
I pass among them with my white umbrella
as the sun beats down upon the oval plots like pools
in the grass, willows and the grove
of statuary. So the days go by. Fine days
I take my tea beneath the elm
half turned, as though you were beside me saying
Flowers that could take your breath away . . .
And always on the tray
a rose, and always the sun branded on the river
and the men in summer suits, in linen, and the girls,
their skirts circled in shadow . . . Last night
I dreamed that you did not return.
Today is fair. The little maid filled a silver bowl
shaped like a swan with roses for my bedside,
with the dark red they call Brennende Liebe,
which I find so beautiful.
The Fire
Had you died when we were together
I would have wanted nothing of you.
Now I think of you as dead, it is better.
Often, in the cool early evenings of the spring
when, with the first leaves,
all that is deadly enters the world,
I build a fire for us of pine and apple wood;
repeatedly
the flames flare and diminish
as the night comes on in which
we see one another so clearly—
And in the days we are contented
as formerly
in the long grass,
in the woods’ green doors and shadows.
And you never say
Leave me
since the dead do not like being alone.
Marathon (partials, from The Triumph Of Achilles)
5. Night Song
Look up into the light of the lantern.
Don’t you see? The calm of darkness
is the horror of Heaven.
We’ve been apart too long, too painfully separated.
How can you bear to dream,
to give up watching? I think you must be dreaming.
your face is full of mild expectancy.
I need to wake you, to remind you that there isn’t a future.
That’s why we’re free. And now some weakness in me
has been cured forever, so I’m not compelled
to close my eyes, to go back to rectify—
The beach is still; the sea, cleansed of its superfluous life,
opaque, rocklike. In mounds in vegetal clusters,
seabirds sleep on the jetty. Terns, assassins—
You’re tired; I can see that.
We’re both tired, we have acted in a great drama.
Even our hands our cold, that were like kindling.
Our clothes are scattered on the sand; strangely enough,
they never turned to ashes.
I have to tell you what I’ve learned, that I know now
what happens to the dreamers.
They don’t feel it when they change. One day
they wake, they dress, they are old.
Tonight I’m not afraid
to feel the revolutions. How can you want sleep
when passion gives you that peace?
You’re like me tonight, one of the lucky ones.
You’ll get what you want. You’ll get your oblivion.
6. The Beginning
I had come to a strange city, without belongings:
in the dream, it was your city, I was looking for you.
Then I was lost, on a dark street lined with fruit stands.
There was only fruit: blood oranges.
The markets made displays of them beautiful displays—
how else could they compete? And each arrangement had, at its center,
one fruit, cut open.
Then I was on a boulevard, in brilliant sunlight.
I was running; it was easy to run, since I had nothing.
In the distance, I could see your house; a woman knelt in the yard.
There were roses everywhere; in waves, they climbed the high trellis.
Then what began as love for you
became a hunger for structure: I could hear
the woman call to me in common kindness, knowing
I wouldn’t ask for you anymore—
So it was settled: I could have a childhood there.
Which came to mean being always alone.
7 Audio from Sound Cloud
9 Marathon
I was not meant to hear
the two of them talking.
But I could feel the light of the torch
stop trembling, as though it had been
set on a table. I was not to hear
the one say to the other
how best to arouse me,
with what words, what gestures,
nor to hear the description of my body,
how it responded, what
it would not do. My back was turned.
I studied the voices, soon distinguishing
the first, which was deeper, closer,
from that of the replacement.
For all I know, this happens
every night: somebody waking me, then
the first teaching the second.
What happens afterward
occurs far from the world, at a depth
where only the dream matters
and the bond with any one soul
is meaningless; you throw it away.
The Mountain
My students look at me expectantly.
I explain to them that the life of art is a life
of endless labor. Their expressions
hardly change; the need to know
a little more about endless labor.
So I tell them the story of Sisyphus,
how he was doomed to push
a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing
would come of this effort
but that he would repeat it
indefinitely. I tell them
there is joy in this, in the artist’s life,
that one eludes
judgment, as as I speak
I am secretly pushing a rock myself,
slyly pushing it up the steep
face of a mountain. Why do I lie
to these children? They aren’t listening
they aren’t deceived, their fingers
tapping at the wooden desks--
So I retract
the myth; I tell them it occurs
in hell, and that the artist lies
because he is obsessed with attainment,
that he perceives the summit
as that place where he will live forever,
a place about to be
transformed by his burden: with every breath
I am standing at the top of the mountain.
Both my hands are free. And the rock has added
height to the mountain.
Elms
All day I tried to distinguish
need from desire. Now, in the dark,
I feel only bitter sadness for us,
the builders, the planers of wood,
because I have been looking
steadily at these elms
and seen the process that creates
the writhing, stationary tree
is torment, and have understood
it will make no forms but twisted forms.
Cousins (from Ararat (1990))
My son’s very graceful; he has perfect balance.
He’s not competitive, like my sister’s daughter.
Day and night, she’s always practicing.
Today, it’s hitting softballs into the copper beech,
retrieving them, hitting them again.
After a while, no one even watches her.
If she were any stronger, the tree would be bald.
My son won’t play with her; he won’t even ride bicycles with her.
She accepts that; she’s used to playing by herself.
The way she sees it, it isn’t personal:
whoever won’t play doesn’t like losing.
It’s not that my son’s inept, that he doesn’t do things well.
I’ve watched him race: he’s natural, effortless—
right from the first, he takes the lead.
And then he stops. It’s as though he was born rejecting
the solitude of the victor.
My sister’s daughter doesn’t have that problem.
She may as well be first; she’s already alone.
Paradise
I grew up in a village: now
it’s almost a city.
People came from the city, wanting
something simple, something
better for the children.
Clean air; nearby
a little stable.
All the streets
named after sweethearts or girl children.
Our house was gray, the sort of place
you buy to raise a family.
My mother’s still there, all alone.
When she’s lonely, she watches television.
The houses get closer together,
the old trees die or get taken down.
In some ways, my father’s
close, too; we call
a stone by his name.
Now, above his head, the grass blinks,
in spring, when the snow has melted.
Then the lilac blooms, heavy, like clusters of grapes.
They always said
I was like my father, the way he showed
contempt for emotion.
They’re the emotional ones,
my sister and my mother.
More and more
my sister comes from the city,
weeds, tidies the garden. My mother
lets her take over: she’s the one
who cares, the one who does the work.
To her, it looks like country—
the clipped lawns, strips of colored flowers.
She doesn’t know what it once was.
But I know. Like Adam,
I was the firstborn.
Believe me, you never heal,
you never forget the ache in your side,
the place where something was taken away
to make another person.
Celestial Music
I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god,
she thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth, she's unusually competent.
Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness.
We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality.
But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
according to nature. For my sake, she intervened,
brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across the road.
My friend says I shut my eyes to god, that nothing else explains
my aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who buries her head in the pillow
so as not to see, the child who tells herself
that light causes sadness–
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person–
In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
on the same road, except it's winter now;
she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
like brides leaping to a great height–
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth–
In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're both trying to explain, the fact
that we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition
fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering–
it's this stillness that we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.
First Memory
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.
From Wild Iris (1992)
Retreating Light
You were always very young children,
always waiting for a story.
And I’d been through it all too many times;
I was tired of telling stories.
So I gave you the pencil and paper.
I gave you pens made of reeds
I had gathered myself, afternoons in the dense meadows.
I told you, write your own story.
After all those years of listening
I thought you’d know
what a story was.
All you could do was weep.
You wanted everything told to you
and nothing thought through yourselves.
Then I realized you couldn’t think
with any real boldness or passion;
you hadn’t had your own lives yet,
your own tragedies.
So I gave you lives, I gave you tragedies,
because apparently tools alone weren’t enough.
You will never know how deeply
it pleases me to see you sitting there
like independent beings,
to see you dreaming by the open window,
holding the pencils I gave you
until the summer morning disappears into writing.
Creation has brought you
great excitement, as I knew it would,
as it does in the beginning.
And I am free to do as I please now,
to attend to other things, in confidence
you have no need of me anymore.
Vespers: Parousia
Love of my life, you
Are lost and I am
Young again.
A few years pass.
The air fills
With girlish music;
In the front yard
The apple tree is
Studded with blossoms.
I try to win you back,
That is the point
Of the writing.
But you are gone forever,
As in Russian novels, saying
A few words I don't remember-
How lush the world is,
How full of things that don't belong to me-
I watch the blossoms shatter,
No longer pink,
But old, old, a yellowish white-
The petals seem
To float on the bright grass,
Fluttering slightly.
What a nothing you were,
To be changed so quickly
Into an image, an odor-
You are everywhere, source
Of wisdom and anguish.
From Meadowlands (1997)
Penelope's Stubbornness
A bird comes to the window. It’s a mistake
to think of them
as birds, they are so often
messengers. That is why, once they
plummet to the sill, they sit
so perfectly still, to mock
patience, lifting their heads to sing
poor lady, poor lady, their three-note
warning, later flying
like a dark cloud from the sill to the olive grove.
But who would send such a weightless being
to judge my life? My thoughts are deep
and my memory long; why would I envy such freedom
when I have humanity? Those
with the smallest hearts
have the greatest freedom.
Found some stuff:
All Hallows read by her, no visual, YouTube
"The Untrustworthy Speaker" YouTube
Longer reading of poems from May 11th 2016, including Mock Orange, and poems spoken from flowers.
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