Here are my reasons for being a total fangirl about it:
- As a book, it's masterfully conceived. Gluck obviously planned it out very carefully and thought a great deal about her premise and how the poems would speak to each other. The book begins with the first flowers of early spring and ends with the death of the last of summer's blossoms. Each poem is told from the point of view of either a human speaker, God, or a flower. The human speaker calls out to God to be reassured of His existence, God chastises the human about her deafness, and the plants speak to the human to complain about her foolishness. The book is tight and precise, and I wonder at Gluck's ability to get a whole collection out of such a limited space (a summer garden) and such a limited subject matter.
- Speaking through flowers? Is she kidding? The book's premise sounds implausible and frivolous and silly, but Gluck makes it feel totally natural. I took the flowers perfectly seriously and found the poems to be surprising, moving, and profound.
- Gluck makes death new again. The fear of death is an ancient theme, and the inability to connect with God is just as old. But by speaking through one garden, a few clumps of flowers, and certain slants of light, Gluck makes the human speaker's angst entirely new again. Her ability to reinvigorate this fear is astonishing.
- The poems are wonderfully simple. Each poem is brief, perfectly executed, and centered around one concept, one nugget of truth. The rest of the poem simply sets up the speaker's voice and prepares us for the poem's real crux. Gluck gives her poems space to breathe, space to luxuriate in their own meaning. I think it takes a lot of skill, self-restraint, and confidence to write this way.
- This book makes me want to write. Not all poetry does this to me: some poems cow me with their brilliance, some poems bore me with their dullness, but it's a rare and wonderful poem that inspires me to pick up my own pen and write. Gluck is the kind of poet that other poets love to read, and I'm no longer surprised that this book has been recommended to me by so many writers.
These two poems are the last in the book. After all of the human speaker's yearnings for God, after all of His failed attempts to be heard, after all of the fear of death lurking at the edges of these poems, everything comes to a head here: the flowers die, and it seems that God cannot, or chooses not to, hear them.
These poems are beautiful in themselves, but the impact they have at the end of the volume is astonishing: the phrases "your child's terror" and "we have entered eternity" leap from the final pages, chilling the reader with the harsh reality of mortal life and death.
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The Gold Lily
By Louise Gluck
From The Wild Iris
Taken from Plagiarist.com
As I perceive I am dying now and know I will not speak again, will not survive the earth, be summoned out of it again, not a flower yet, a spine only, raw dirt catching my ribs, I call you, father and master: all around, my companions are failing, thinking you do not see. How can they know you see unless you save us? In the summer twilight, are you close enough to hear your child's terror? Or are you not my father, you who raised me?
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The White LiliesBy Louise Gluck
From The Wild Iris
Taken from Plagiarist.com
As a man and woman make a garden between them like a bed of stars, here they linger in the summer evening and the evening turns cold with their terror: it could all end, it is capable of devastation. All, all can be lost, through scented air the narrow columns uselessly rising, and beyond, a churning sea of poppies-- Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me how many summers I live to return: this one summer we have entered eternity. I felt your two hands bury me to release its splendor.
1 comment:
I am very intrigued! Poetry written in the voice of flowers! Will you let me read your copy or do I need my own????
heart U! xoxoxox
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