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

reflective medium-paced

4.0

Winter Recipes is a quiet, chapbook-length collection of prosaic yet lyrical poems about loss and aging with an emphasis on family and friendship. It would be easy to fall into a pit of nostalgia, but Glück remains reflective without being saccharine or sentimental. Similarly to her 2006 collection, Averno, where Roman and Greek mythology frames her thoughts on grief and mother/daughter relationships, Winter Recipes references Chinese philosophy and parables to describe the certitude of death and senescent.

This is a stunning addition to Glück's body of work and continues themes from other collections, but it is not my most-loved book by her. That, of course, does not make it any less good. To end, here is a moment from one of my favorites, An Endless Story:

…There was a bird, she said. 
Someone is supposed to kiss it. 
[…] Once it is kissed 
it becomes a human being. So it cannot fly; 
it can only sit and stand and lie down. 
[…] That was a bad trade, she said, 
the wings for the kiss. 
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