A review by theeuphoriczat
Winter Recipes from the Collective: Poems by Louise Glück

4.0

This was TOOO SHORT.

The poems are narrative and conversational. The authorial voice is that of a person with experience of loss or nearing death. You could replace 'winter' for 'death', as it is a season we spend months (our lives), toiling, gathering and preparing for.

There is no doubt that each poem began to prepare me for life's winter. It is a meditation and reflection on birth, comradery, ageing, the passage of time, loss, death, love, existence, the search for fulfilment, devotion, and stillness (either calmness or companionship).

Life, my sister said,
is like a torch passed now
from the body to the mind.
Sadly, she went one, the mind is not
there to receive it."
From the poem 'Autumn'

"Everything has ended, I said.
What makes you say so, my sister asked.
Because, I said, if it has not ended,
it will end soon which comes to the same thing.
And if that is the case,
there is no point in begining
so much as a sentence."

From the poem 'A Sentence'

"What a shame I became
verbal, with no connection
to that memory. My mother's love!
All to soon I emerged
my true self,
robust but sour,
like an alarm clock."

From the poem 'Night Thoughts'