Today, I send you Louise Gluck -- there is an umlaut above the U, which I seem incapable of finding a keystroke for. Epic failure. But, as a lame segue, Louise Gluck is an epic lady who pens epic poems. In the traditional sense, too.
The Facts:
She was born in 1943 in New York and did undergrad at Sarah Lawrence College. (Sarah Lawrence, Vassar, and Oberlin seem to be the colleges that pop up time and time again while stalking cool people.) Appointed Poet Laureate of the US in 2003, her poetry has an mythical non-autobiographical focus.
Isn't she fierce & sexy?
Her best known book of poems is The Wild Iris -- it won a Pulitzer and was more accessible and gripping than a lot of her earlier work. I'm currently in ownership of her first four books in one bound edition, and happy to see that not every poem is a complete breathtaking work of genius that makes me feel tiny and talentless. It's comforting to know that mind-blowing creative genius isn't a constant. Not some genetic tick that you're either born with or not. (Just imagining a deadpan baby Plath calling her father "black shoe" from her trainer toilet.) As far as I can see, Kathrine, people write and they write until they hit their stride and that's when things get interesting. And I hope these letters manage to focus mostly on the interesting stuff.
So here are some poems I found spiffy:
The Magi
Toward the world's end, through the bare
Beginnings of winter, they are traveling again.
How many winters have we seen it happen,
Watched the same sign come forward as they pass
Cities sprung around this route their gold
Engraved on the desert, and yet
Held our peace, these
Being the Wise, come to see at the accustomed hour
Nothing changed: roofs, the barn
Blazing in darkness, all they wish to see.
From the 1970-1971 section of my Poetry magazine anthology. A sweet little biblical piece about the spectacular, world-changing things being found in the mundane. I'll always try my best to share pieces published by them, since I know appearing in Poetry is on both of our bucket lists.
I've been there ladies, and so can you. Rawr...
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.
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.
From The House on the Marshland. I swear I experienced this feeling but it was less poetic and more eww-that'd-be-like-kissing-my-brother-or-something.
Siren
I became a criminal when I fell in love.
Before that I was a waitress.
I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.
I wanted to marry you, I wanted
Your wife to suffer.
I wanted her life to be like a play
In which all the parts are sad parts.
Does a good person
Think this way? I deserve
Credit for my courage--
I sat in the dark on your front porch.
Everything was clear to me:
If your wife wouldn't let you go
That proved she didn't love you.
If she loved you
Wouldn't she want you to be happy?
I think now
If I felt less I would be
A better person. I was
A good waitress.
I could carry eight drinks.
I used to tell you my dreams.
Last night I saw a woman sitting in a dark bus--
In the dream, she's weeping, the bus she's on
Is moving away. With one hand
She's waving; the other strokes
An egg carton full of babies.
The dream doesn't rescue the maiden.
I regret bitterly
The years of loving you in both
Your presence and absence, regret
The law, the vocation
That forbid me to keep you, the sea
A sheet of glass, the sun-bleached
Beauty of the Greek ships: how
Could I have power if
I had no wish
To transform you: as
You loved my body,
As you found there
Passion we held above
All other gifts, in that single moment
Over honor and hope, over
Loyalty, in the name of that bond
I refuse you
Such feeling for your wife
As will let you
Rest with her, I refuse you
Sleep again
If I cannot have you.
And this next one might be my favorite:The Untrustworthy Speaker
Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken.
I don’t see anything objectively.
I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
that’s when I’m least to be trusted.
It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised
for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight.
In the end, they’re wasted—
I never see myself,
standing on the front steps, holding my sister’s hand.
That’s why I can’t account
for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.
In my own mind, I’m invisible: that’s why I’m dangerous.
People like me, who seem selfless,
we’re the cripples, the liars;
we’re the ones who should be factored out
in the interest of truth.
When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas
red and bright pink.
If you want the truth, you have to close yourself
to the older daughter, block her out:
when a living thing is hurt like that,
in its deepest workings,
all function is altered.
That’s why I’m not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart
is also a wound to the mind.
From Ararat.
I had to end it with the angrier feminist pieces, since all I can do is write about relationship stuff and how utterly pissed I -- erm, I mean, how utterly pissed the speaker is these days.
So that is all I have on Louise Gluck at the moment, and I think she's pretty amazing. I'd recommend The Wild Iris, Ararat, The House on the Marshland, but not necessarily in that order.
And, by the way, happy to be a part of your first Gluck!
Love,
~K
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