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benplatt's review against another edition
4.0
I always enjoy the opportunity to read through a poet’s work chronologically in this way. As someone who only knew Glück from a handful of anthologized single poems and [b:The Wild Iris|76546|The Wild Iris|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388251429l/76546._SX50_.jpg|74057], my conception of her poetics is radically different after reading this. Now, [b:The Wild Iris|76546|The Wild Iris|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388251429l/76546._SX50_.jpg|74057] feels in some ways like an outlier amid her work – the formal concision that has become a defining characteristic of her writing is consistent, but the profound darkness that permeates her other writing is held at bay, and the heteroglossia as we move between a fairly large selection of speakers, be they flower, human, or divine, in [b:The Wild Iris|76546|The Wild Iris|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388251429l/76546._SX50_.jpg|74057] contrasts sharply with her largely (occasionally relentlessly) internal, intimate, and individualized mode throughout the rest of these collections. [b:The Wild Iris|76546|The Wild Iris|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388251429l/76546._SX50_.jpg|74057] remains my favorite work of Glück’s, but I feel like I better understand her work now. The rare exceptions to her more concise work, especially in later collections such as [b:A Village Life|6100917|A Village Life|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1316635798l/6100917._SX50_.jpg|6278130], are welcome experiments that work particularly well. She seems to have a radically different relationship to the nonhuman world, inverting the traditional deification and separation that other nature poetry projects onto it by offering a benign world in which the fabricated nature of those projections becomes clear if one can pierce the veil of human perception for long enough. For me, these nature poems and her poetry of the self, of isolation and the unbridgeable difference between the self and the rest of the world but the desire that pushes you to cross that gulf, are where her poetry resonates the most, and her grappling with trauma throughout every collection becomes a mode of exploring the roots of her speakers’ isolation and perception of the world in a remarkable way. Which is good, because the self and this lyrical, first-person perspective are maybe what I’d point to as her defining formal mode, unlike what a collection like [b:The Wild Iris|76546|The Wild Iris|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388251429l/76546._SX50_.jpg|74057] might indicate. As far as collections go, I find myself most drawn to her later work (within the parameters of this anthology), particularly [b:Averno|76548|Averno|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1316728794l/76548._SY75_.jpg|793615] and [b:A Village Life|6100917|A Village Life|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1316635798l/6100917._SX50_.jpg|6278130], although [b:The Wild Iris|76546|The Wild Iris|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388251429l/76546._SX50_.jpg|74057] and [b:The Triumph of Achilles|1934711|The Triumph of Achilles|Louise Glück|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387702986l/1934711._SX50_.jpg|132161] are standouts as well.
3vi333's review against another edition
5.0
beautiful and powerful and haunting. i feel like a different person after finishing this collection
novelesque_life's review against another edition
4.0
RATING: 4 STARS
This is a thick anthology, so you get a big chunk of Gluck's work in 50 years. As it was a library loan, I only read the book through, and did not take time with each poem. I would like to go back to them and take more time and care with them.
This is a thick anthology, so you get a big chunk of Gluck's work in 50 years. As it was a library loan, I only read the book through, and did not take time with each poem. I would like to go back to them and take more time and care with them.
dejnozkova's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Louise Glück’s poetry captures a vulnerable sense of being lost in the sufferings of the world and crawling painfully towards wisdom and acceptance (and maybe a bit of resignation). Like many poets she uses her art to observe the world but half the time I think she ends up without much of an answer to the things she wonders about. A lot of her poetry is confessional and she often parallels her life and observations against Greek mythology (like, a lot). I’d say that she writes more softly, even when the subject matter is particularly dark.
I definitely found a good many poems in this collection that I enjoyed and even the lonely ones felt like gentle embraces. I did get bored with the Greek and Christian themes after a while though —I just feel that these are overplayed.
I definitely found a good many poems in this collection that I enjoyed and even the lonely ones felt like gentle embraces. I did get bored with the Greek and Christian themes after a while though —I just feel that these are overplayed.