Louise Gluck Books

Louise Gluck, Averno Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006)

I've never been entirely sure what to think of the work of Louise Gluck; Averno, however, has certainly tipped the balance into the "dislike" bucket. When she is good, she is very, very good; when she is bad, however, you get stuff like this:

"'You girls,' my mother said, 'should marry
someone like your father.'

That was one remark. Another was,
'There is no one like your father.'"
("Prism")

As pithy as the wisdom may be, the poetry is entirely absent. I'd expect this sort of thing in a run-of-the-mill memoir, not in a volume from a Pulitzer Prize-winner. On the other hand, as I said, when she's good, etc. Given a strong image and a slight difference in the way she works with repetition, she can craft some really great stuff:

"You get on a train, you disappear.
You write your name on the window, you disappear.

There are places like this everywhere,
places you enter as a young girl,
from which you never return."
("Averno")

I've added and subtracted a star from my rating of this book at least twenty times as I've mulled over how to review it, usually depending on which poem I happen to be contemplating at the time. While it's obviously a must for Gluck fans, those who are knew to her work should probably start somewhere else (the Pulitzer-winning The Wild Iris or her best [IMO] book, The House on Marshland). ***

I can barely breathe. It's not because I'm a female in some kind of a swoon. It's because she never fails to tell the truth no matter how hard it might be to swallow. Also, most of the Master poets (among which Ms. Gluck surely is included) never, ever fail to tackle those dark, disturbing, complex places most of us refuse to even consider let alone pen as a work of art. As a result, this collection shines, literally, in the dark. I don't care if she uses an ancient mythic-metaphor that has been employed before. I don't care if some find it 'depressing.' But I very much care when a Masterpiece like this doesn't get the 5-star rating I believe it deserves. Ms. Gluck is among the most courageous poets worldwide. I'd say that puts her at the top of my list...exactly where she has always been.

The book "Averno" appeared almost immediately after I ordered it. The service was efficient and the packaging was secure.

Louise Glück is a radiant poet. She molds her words and phrases, meter and lines, message and thoughts as a master craftsman. This is her tenth collection of poems and for this reader it is her finest.

The title of the book is the title of the poem ensemble: Averno is a small crater in Italy believed by ancient Romans to be the opening in earth's crust that provided a path to the underworld. It is in this setting that Glück retells the myth of Persephone in eighteen poems in a manner that visits death, anguish, dark lamentations all in a way that makes each of the poems like the intricate complex of a Chinese puzzle.

While some poets are content to re-visit the classics, 'translating' them into contemporary language, Glück is not satisfied to plagiarize. Instead she takes the myth and transforms it into paths to introspection, raising artful questions and thoughts that she adamantly refuses to answer for us. It is the work of a genius poet. It is a treasure of a book. Grady Harp, December 06

Louise Gluck remains an elegant poet, able to evoke the mysteries of being crafted in the forms of gods while surviving our humanity. She is quick to capture our attention and lingers as we put her book aside in response to daily obligations.

Through "ARARAT" I discovered Louise Glück,my most favorite living poet on this planet.Every book she created is deep,elegant and mystifying.

Gluck is an amazing poet and one of the wonders of her work is that it is meant to be read like a book: front to back. This book describes her loss of her father and sister and how she has dealt with this through life, with her mother and her son. An amazing work that every poem sticks and is valuable to the collection. My favorite is Fantasy-- which is such an in tune description on loss, describing how one might describe death when they were at a loss for words.

After a friend of mine recommended Gluck's poetry to me, I bought Ararat at the local bookstore and it sat on my shelf for months. Finally, when I found the time, I sat down and read it. I thought about it. And then I read it again. It is a phenomenal book. What I especially enjoy is Gluck's approach to writing a complete sequence of poems, which she then encloses in a "book." Story or myth, call it what you will--behind these poems is a disciplined passion, a sort of genius that I appreciate. READ IT, I promise you won't be sorry.

Probably the most influential book of poetry published in the language in the last two decades; solidified (and spawned a generation of mimics of) what is now widely recognized as The Gluck Style: spare, unblinking but not unflinching, tough, mournful, deceptively simple. The book, rightfully, that all her other books (except The Wild Iris) may be judged. "Long ago I was wounded.." it begins. Gluck turns away from alluding to a specific mythology (though she runs back to it in Meadowlands and Vita Nova; though, in fact, Ararat itself is a Jewish myth) to read the mythology of domesticity: her father the hero, her sister the Fury, her mother like Dido, herself like Euridice, whose only hope of escaping is to turn completely away. But Gluck was "born to a vocation," to bear witness to the great and ordinary mysteries, the death of her father, the death of a sister, the ache and hunger repeated infinitely within her drama of four, the view of her family that will reduce her to ashes in the act of witnessing. "Like Adam, I was the firstborn. Believe me, you never heal. You never forget the ache in your side where something was taken to make another person." She accomplishes all: poetry, drama, narrative. And somehow she escapes the cheap glamour of confessional poetry. These are painfully honest pieces that she somehow also keeps at arm's length, to examine like an artifact. By all means, read this book. The language and imagery and syntax are easy, unintimidating, and then you realize that she has laid out quite plainly the way people love and harbor and reject one another. "Long ago, I was wounded. I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved."

Spencer Reece has achieved a rarity in first poetry books--a collection that displays the voice of maturity and the guileless wonder of youth. The Clerk's Tale concerns itself with no less than the journey of the soul. Many of the "tales" are taken from Reece's life and detail the loss of his home and possessions, his time spent in a psychiatric ward, and his gradual recovery and the reclamation of his life. Though these beautifully rendered pieces are heartbreaking in their forthrightness and honesty, they never wallow in self-pity or lapse into solipsism; instead they ultimately reaffirm the necessity of accepting darkness and difficulty as part and parcel of a fully realized life. I highly recommend this collection.

I read this entire book of poems in one sitting---something I rarely do with poetry. It's hard to believe that this is a first book of poetry because the poems are so amazing, succinct and perfect. It's a journey into one man's life that will leave you wanting more.

Thank you, Mr. Reece, for sharing your life though your awesome poems.

Reece takes his reader's around the US and brings them back to themselves. For the first time, for me at least, one sees the irony of the beauty of the outside of a hospital and then the agony within.

One travels from the busy streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, to the quiet back waters of Florida. Reece shows a great desire of silence, for solitude. When a days work is done he goes home and shuts himself in a room, left with nothing but silence and his thoughts.

A reflextion on life and what is all the hurry about.

I heard this guy read at a Poetry Society of America-sponsored reading and amidst all the other outstanding poets, his was the voice I wanted to know more about. He's the real thing.

Another early but confident;sorrowful but deep collection from the master poetess of this planet.

This is a beautiful, well-crafted work of poetry only Louise Gluck could have written. Though this is only her third collection of poems, "Descending Figure" possesses as much---if not more---power as any other book she has published. The most provocative poems are: "Descending Figure," which includes a brilliant section concerning a child dying in his mother's arms; "The Garden;" and "Lamentations." The poems of this book provide only meager hints of Gluck's forthcoming genius through examining mythology and Biblical stories.

I don't know what was in the water in 1993, but, as someone who has read every year's Best American Poetry anthology, I can say this is definitely the best collection of all. Louise Gluck--who, I admit, I also quite love--does a near-perfect job in her selections. It is true that you will find all of the heavy-hitters here: Merwin, Kunitz, Ammons, Ashbery, Simic, Updike, mixed with the usual delightful surprises (Carolyn Creedon, the late Tim Dlugos, Alice Fogel, the sublime Robert Kelly.) However, Gluck has a knack for finding even the most oblique poet's most direct and elegant pieces, even unearthing an unusually tender gem from Dean Young. This is a great anthology to teach from, filled as it is with compelling pieces and fascinating behind-the-poem anecdotes by the poets.

A mature work from her relatively immature period.Serene and inviting..

She has reached her utmost maturity with the "Ararat".This early book signals emergence of a philosophical master voice:deep and gripping.

In her fourth collection of poetry the readers are once again consistently rewarded with elegant,deep and distinctive poems.The thin collection(26 short poems) is painlessly read but rather deeply felt. Another powerful output I can satisfyingly reread.

In this work, L. Gluck shows the reader her true strong emotion, and the enthalpy of love. Her images are gripping -- sometimes stark and at other times lush and vibrant. Common to all her pieces is the ability to move the reader to feel emotion. Maybe it is a sudden gasp of revelation of connection or perhaps the moment comes later, when the poetry resurfaces from deep in memory. Beware, emotions will be evoked.

Even though the Inferno is not intended to be an analysis of the philosophy of sins, but rather an implementation of Christian doctrines, Dante did not miss the opportunity to enhance his glory at the expense of his sinner rivals. A sinner's punishment was proportional to their sin, but the degree of evil associated with each sin was defined by Dante's own moral system. It was interesting to note that he considered murder less evil than fraud. Another interesting point was that it was necessary for Dante and Virgil to stop at the river of forgetfulness before getting out of Hell.

The intention of the journey was in one way or another to find Beatrice, the love that Dante lost early on earth and was hoping to meet in heaven. Most likely, the Divine Comedy wouldn't have seen the light of day if Dante had married Beatrice.

Nice poem, Dante's ego gets out of control at some points, but that can be forgiven, given the artistic work he created.

[...] I recall Robert Pinsky, in the Note to his English translation of Dante's Inferno, humbly hoping to bring to the modern reader the vernacular musicality of that Medieval poet. "Improvised and imperfect at every point," Pinsky writes about his splendid attempt, his essay at renewal, "but pushing on: trying to turn the wheel surely enough to accomplish what work it can" [...] --from "Recollections"

"Midway life's journey I was made aware/that I had strayed into a dark forest..." Those eerie words open the first cantica of Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," the most famous part of the legendary Divina Comedia. But the stuff going on here is anything but divine, as Dante explores the metaphorical and supernatural horrors of the inferno.

The date is Good Friday of the year 1300, and Dante is lost in a creepy dark forest, being assaulted by a trio of beasts who symbolize his own sins. But suddenly he is rescued ("Not man; man I once was") by the legendary poet Virgil, who takes the despondent Dante under his wing -- and down into Hell.

But this isn't a straightforward hell of flames and dancing devils. Instead, it's a multi-tiered carnival of horrors, where different sins are punished with different means. Opportunists are forever stung by insects, the lustful are trapped in a storm, the greedy are forced to battle against each other, and the violent lie in a river of boiling blood, are transformed into thorn bushes, and are trapped on a volcanic desert.

If nothing else makes you feel like being good, then "The Inferno" might change your mind. The author loads up his "Inferno" with every kind of disgusting, grotesque punishment that you can imagine -- and it's all wrapped up in an allegorical journey of humankind's redemption, not to mention dissing the politics of Italy and Florence.

Along with Virgil -- author of the "Aeneid" -- Dante peppered his Inferno with Greek myth and symbolism. Like the Greek underworld, different punishments await different sins; what's more, there are also appearances by harpies, centaurs, Cerberus and the god Pluto. But the sinners are mostly Dante's contemporaries, from corrupt popes to soldiers.

And Dante's skill as a writer can't be denied -- the grotesque punishments are enough to make your skin crawl ("Fixed in the slime, groan they, 'We were sullen and wroth...'"), and the grand finale is Satan himself, with legendary traitors Brutus, Cassius and Judas sitting in his mouths. (Yes, I said MOUTHS, not "mouth")

More impressive still is his ability to weave the poetry out of symbolism and allegory, without it ever seeming preachy or annoying. Even pre-hell, we have a lion, a leopard and a wolf, which symbolize different sins, and a dark forest that indicates suicidal thoughts. And the punishments themselves usually reflect the person's flaws, such as false prophets having their heads twisted around so they can only see what's behind them. Wicked sense of humor.

Dante's vivid writing and wildly imaginative "inferno" makes this the most fascinating, compelling volume of the Divine Comedy. Never fun, but always spellbinding and complicated.

This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization. The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 cantos and three books is not just literary. Dante's autobiographical poem Commedia, as he titled it, was his look into the individual psyche and human soul. He explored and reflected on such fundamental questions as political institutions and their problems, the nature of humankind's moral actions, and the possibility of spiritual transformation; these were all fundamental social and cultural concerns for people during the fourteenth-century. Dante wrote the Commedia not in Latin but in the Tuscan dialect of Italian so that it would reach a broader readership. The Commedia was a three-part journey undertaken by the pilgrim Dante to the realms of the Christian afterlife: Hell, (Inferno), Purgatory, (Purgatorio), and Paradise, (Paradisio).

The poem narrated in first person, began with Dante lost midlife. He was 35 years old in the year 1300 and in a dark wood. Being lost in the dark wood was certainly an allegorical device that Dante used to express the condition of his own life at the time he started writing the poem. Dante had been active in Florentine politics and a member of the White Guelph party who opposed the secular rule of Pope Boniface VIII over Florence. In 1302, The Black Guelphs who were allied with the Pope, were militarily victorious in gaining control of the city and Dante found himself an exile from his beloved city for the rest of his life. Thus, Dante started writing the Commedia in 1308 and used it to comment on his own tribulations of life, and to state his views on politics and religion, and heap scorn on his political enemies.

Dante's first leg of his journey out of the dark wood was through the nine concentric circles of Hell (Inferno), escorted by his favorite classical Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid. Dante borrowed heavily from Virgil's Aeneid. Much of Dante's description of hell had similarities to Virgil's description in his sixth book of the Aeneid. Dante's three major divisions of sin in hell where unrepentant sinners dwelled, had their sources in Aristotle and Augustinian philosophy. They were self-indulgence, violence, and fraud. Fraud was considered the worst of moral failures because it undermined family, trust, and religion; in essence, it tore at the moral fabric of civilized society. These divisions were inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom. The fourth classical virtue, justice, is what Dante came to believe after his journey through hell that all its inhabitants received for their unrepentant sins. There were nine concentric circles of hell inside the earth; each smaller than the previous one. For Dante the geography of hell was a moral geography as well as a physical one, reflecting the nature of the sin. Canto IV describes the first circle of hell, Limbo, which is where Dante met the shades, as souls where called, of the virtuous un-baptized such as Homer, Ovid, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato.

In the four circles for the sin of self-indulgence Dante met shades who where lustful, gluttons, hoarders and wrathful. In the second circle of Hell, lustful souls were blown around in a violent storm. In Canto V, one of the great dramatic moments of the poem, Dante had his first lengthy encounter with an unrepentant sinner Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with her brother-in-law. Like all the sinners in hell, Francesca laid the blame for her sin elsewhere. She claimed to be seduced into committing adultery after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. At the end of the scene, Dante fainted out of pity for Francesca.

In Canto X, the sixth circle of hell reserved for heretics who are punished by being trapped in flaming tombs, Dante took the opportunity to use the circle to chastise political leaders for participating in political partisanship. A Florentine who was a leader in the rival Ghibbelline political party, Farinata degli Uberti, accosted Dante. Both men aggressively argued with each other, recreating in hell the bitterness of partisan politics in Florence. Farinata predicted Dante's exile. Dante used this Canto to show the dangerous tendencies of petty political partisanship that he harbored.

The seventh circle of hell was subdivided into three areas where sinners were punished for doing violence against themselves, their neighbors, or God. In Canto XIII Dante encountered Pier della Vigne in the wood of the suicides. The shades there were shrubs who had to speak through a broken branch. Pier spoke to Dante about how he had been an important advisor to Emperor Frederick II, and how he blamed his fall, and his suicide, on the envy of other court members. This Canto was especially important because Dante came to grips with his own "future" fall from political power and exile. Pier's behavior served as a strong example to Dante how not to act in exile. Whether he had been tempted to commit suicide is not clear; however, he certainly had been prone to the selfish and despairing attitude that Pier represented.

The last two circles of hell contained the sinners of fraud. In the eighth circle, there were ten ditches for the various types of fraud such as Simony, thievery, hypocrisy, etc. Canto XIX described the third ditch, which contained those guilty of Simony, the sin of church leaders perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church offices. Simonists were buried upside down in a rock with their feet on fire. Pope Nicholas III mistakenly addressed Dante as Pope Boniface VIII who was the current Pope in 1300, and whose place in hell was thereby predicted. This is not surprising since Boniface was the person most responsible for Dante's exile. In an interesting literary twist, Nicholas "confessed" to Dante, as if he was a priest, his sin of greed and nepotism. He admitted that even after becoming Pope he cared more for his family's interests than the good of the whole Church. Dante responded to Nicholas' "confession" with a stinging condemnation of Simony drawn from the Book of Revelation. After this encounter, Dante came to understand that hell was a place of justice.

Canto XXXIV, the last one in the Inferno, depicted Satan with three heads. Each head was chewing the three worst sinners of humankind. The middle head was chewing on the head of Judas Iscariot, who was a disciple to Jesus and his betrayer. The other two heads were chewing Brutus and Cassius; the murderers of Julius Caesar, and the two men Dante faulted for the destruction of a unified Italy. Dante considered the two ultimate betrayals against God and against the empire as the worst betrayals perpetrated in the history of humankind.

Thus, Dante's intent in his Commedia was to teach fourteenth-century readers that if one wanted to ascend spiritually towards God then one needed to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant. By doing this, one could learn to overcome the same tendencies found in themselves. He wanted people to realize what he had come to learn that political partisanship would only stand in the way of unifying Italy and keep it from regaining any of its former glory that it enjoyed during the time of the Roman Empire.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

The Inferno of Dante is undoubtedly a book worth reading because of its historical influence and impressive poetry, but without a skilled translator the meaning or poetic form is lost. Robert Pinsky manages to find a perfect balance between Dante's message and style. Combined with notes that explain Dante's many historical references, this balance allows The Inferno of Dante to continue to be a great piece of literature. In order to maintain the necessary balance between Dante's message and style, Robert Pinsky uses a looser form of rhyming than most people use. He rhymes leads with sides and defer with there. Although these may not rhyme as well as heat and sheet, they have enough in common that they are able to demonstrate the rhythm of the tertiary rhyme in The Inferno of Dante. Pinsky's loose rhyming gives him more choices, which allow him to better preserve Dante's message.
This message, however, would be lost on today's readers if it were not for notes that help further translate the meaning of events within The Inferno of Dante. Most of the characters Dante meets along his journey have long been forgotten by the average reader. How many people would understand the significance of the name Bocca? Upon hearing this Dante says, "I have no further need to speak with you" (Pinsky 347). This leaves the reader completely clueless as to who Bocca was. This is remedied by using the notes Pinsky provides in his translation. These notes tell the reader that Bocca betrayed his party in battle causing their defeat (Pinsky 423).
This extra information is essential to Robert Pinsky's translation, which retains the amazing rhythm, beauty, and message that Dante designed.


Works Cited
Dante. The Inferno of Dante. Trans. Robert Pinsky. New York: Farrar, Straus, and

Giroux, 1994.