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sumactots99's review
5.0
“And the past, as always, stretched before us, still, complex, impenetrable.
How long did we lie there
as, arm in arm in their cloaks of feathers,
The gods walked down
From the mountains we built for them?” (The Fear Of Love, 3)
“Such a long journey.
And already the remote, trembling lights of the village,
Not pausing for it as they scan the rows.” (The Fear of Burial, 5)
“Under the strained fabric
of her skin, his heart
Stirred.” (Pietà, 10)
“They can afford to die.
They have their place in the dying order.” (Thanksgiving, 14)
“So much pain in the world— the formless grief of the body, whose language is hunger—“ (Epithalamium, 17)
“Each tree forms where he left it,
Leafless, trapped in his breath.” (Illuminations, 19)
“I think you let me stare
So you can turn against yourself
With greater violence,
Needing to show me how you scrape the flesh away scornfully and without hesitation
Until I see you correctly,
As a man bleeding, not
The reflection I desire.” (The Mirror, 20).
“A child dreams the outline of a body.
She draws what she can, but it is white all through,
She cannot fill what she knows is there.
Within that unsupported line, she knows
That life is missing; she has cut one background from another. Like a child,
She turns to her mother.
And you draw the heart
Against the emptiness she has created.” (Portrait, 21)
“Envy is a dance, too; the need to hurt
Binds you to your partner.” (Tango, 22)
“I trusted no one. My name
Was like a stranger’s,
Read from an envelope.
But nothing was taken from me
that I could have used.
For once, I admit that […]
You were the gold sun on the horizon,
I was the judgement, my shadow
Preceded me, not wavering […]
Of two sisters
One is always the watcher,
One the dancer.” (Tango)
- - - -
“This is what marriage is […]
I do not question
their happiness. And he rushes in
with his young man’s hunger,
So proud to have taught her that:
his kiss would have been
Clearly tender—
Of course, of course. Except
It might as well have been
His hand over her mouth.” (Grandmother, 30)
- - - -
“It begins quietly
in certain female children:
the fear of death, taking as its form
dedication to hunger,
because a woman’s body
is a grave; it will accept
anything. I remember
lying in a bed at night
touching the soft, digressive breasts,
touching, at fifteen,
the interfering flesh
that I would sacrifice
until the limbs were free
of blossom and subterfuge: I felt
what I feel now, aligning these words–
it is the same need to perfect,
of which death is the mere byproduct.” ( The Deviation, 32)
- - - -
“The child
Having no self to speak of,
Comes to life in denial—“ (Sacred Objects, 33)
- - - -
“The word
is bear: you give and give, you empty yourself
Into a child. And you survive
The automatic loss. Against human landscape,
The tree remains a figure for grief; it’s form is forced accommodation. At the grave,
It is the woman, isn’t it, who bends,
The spear useless beside her.” (Autumnal, 37)
- - - -
“Now that she is again no one’s,
She pushes her more durable relationships
With traffic and cold nature, as though at pains
To wound herself so that she will not heal.
She is past being taken in by kindness,
Preferring wet streets: what death claims it does not abandon.” (Rosy, 40)
“I sleep so you will be alive,
It is that simple.
The dreams themselves are nothing.
They are a sickness you control,
Nothing more. […]
And then the morning comes, demanding prey.
Remember? And the world complies.” (The Dream of Mourning, 41).
“ I believed
a minds shattering released
The objects of its scrutiny: trees, blue plums in a bowl,
A man reaching for his wife’s hand
Across a slatted table, and quietly covering it
As though his will enclosed it in that gesture.
I saw them come apart, the glazed clay
Begin dividing endlessly, dispersing
Incoherent particles that went on shining forever.” (World Breaking Apart, 43)
“They were both still,
The woman mournful, the man
Branching into her body.” (The Logos, 44)
“A forest rose from the earth.
O pitiful, so needing
God’s furious love.
Together they were beasts.
They lay in the fixed
Dusk of his negligence.” (Nocturne, 46)
ohdearapollo's review
2.0
Descending Figure is a rather short poem collection by Louise Glück from 1980. It contains themes such a grief, family and the self. Some of the poems are more easy to follow and interpret while others need to be reread a second time. Which in my opinion is totally okay and a good poem should leave you with the need to understand it more.
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