Scan barcode
A review by theliteraryteapot
Ararat by Louise Glück
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
3.25
Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!
This is a new edition of Ararat, a poetry collection about family, loss and grief. Louise Glück has this great ability to reflect on her suffering. And doing so when it comes to family is not easy, there's such complexity in a family system and in generational trauma. She examines for instance sister dynamics, heterosexual marriage, or the place of a child and the love for your family you have to feel.
In Ararat, her writing is a bit different than her other two books that I have read (Averno and The Wild Iris). We depart from the usual mythological and religious figures (albeit not completely) to dive directly into the poetess’ very personal, intimate, life which brings this work closer to confessional poetry.
I admit, though, that I was not as enchanted by this collection as I was with Averno. For me, something was missing in the writing, although it feels a bit weird to say I felt underwhelmed considering the subject matter. Perhaps the bitterness emerging from the poems prevented me from engaging with the poetess' other emotions?
My favourite poems were: "New World", "Brown Circle", “Mirror Image”, “First Memory”.
This is a new edition of Ararat, a poetry collection about family, loss and grief. Louise Glück has this great ability to reflect on her suffering. And doing so when it comes to family is not easy, there's such complexity in a family system and in generational trauma. She examines for instance sister dynamics, heterosexual marriage, or the place of a child and the love for your family you have to feel.
In Ararat, her writing is a bit different than her other two books that I have read (Averno and The Wild Iris). We depart from the usual mythological and religious figures (albeit not completely) to dive directly into the poetess’ very personal, intimate, life which brings this work closer to confessional poetry.
I admit, though, that I was not as enchanted by this collection as I was with Averno. For me, something was missing in the writing, although it feels a bit weird to say I felt underwhelmed considering the subject matter. Perhaps the bitterness emerging from the poems prevented me from engaging with the poetess' other emotions?
My favourite poems were: "New World", "Brown Circle", “Mirror Image”, “First Memory”.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, and Death of parent