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lilacwhisker's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Although I don't usually read much poetry, I have heard good things about Glück and decided to give this collection a try. In my opinion, if you are trying to get more into a particular poet's work, (or just poetry in general) PLEASE start with a shorter collection. I feel as though I would have appreciated Glück's work way more if I had read other things in-between, because it is easy to get sick of poetry after a couple days. This collection was not too bad, and she definitely improved over the years, but it is very easy to get lost in her poems at times/become confused about the meaning. My favorite poems of hers were ones that told stories from someone else's point of view, because she is very strong at world-building and making you understand how the character's mind works. I would say the main recurring focuses/mentions in her poems were: plants, sex/husbands, and religious stories. The biggest takeaway I got from this book was that too much poetry at once can be tricky to do, especially as someone who is not the best at reading poems.
ilybinaya's review
3.0
raw but not polished, it became a collection of poems that seem so shriekingly immature to those of Glück's latter works. thematically it is slightly voided and too focused on the young imaginations and holograms of marriage and the perceivable horrid that arises. the rest is a mixture of myths (in introductory level) and feelings that didn't dwell well to me. it seems flat at times and void of essence. Glück's flair in poetry, though, is very well present throughout the collection, which is how some of the poems still click for me.
rachbreads's review
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
2.5
I sleep so you will be alive, / it is that simple. / The dreams themselves are nothing. / They are the sickness you control, / nothing more.
Part of my poetry experiment (nothing so exciting, just me reading a ton of poetry to figure out what I like, strengthen my lyric writing muscle, figure out what the poets have to say about the world today) is inevitably reading collections that are not for me and this was....not for me. I have read Louise Glück poetry before (isolated poems here and there) and loved them but I think my problem was this specific collection - first of all it was 4 books in one, and it was just too damn long, and also it was her first four books, and her early stuff is not very good, or at least not to my taste. I found myself doing a lot of skimming and by about halfway through I was really impatient to finish. I'm not totally out on Lousie Glück, if I were to try her again it would be a later collection, or just dropping in on single poems like I had before.
lovemyshelf's review
challenging
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
4.0