I don't read much poetry. I'm unable to sustain the necessary concentrated attention. However, Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020 and has a reputation for "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal" and for frank expressions of sadness and isolation. Sign me up!
I heard that Glück's style varies widely between books, so I purchased this collection rather than a more narrow slice of her work. It's true: each individual book has a distinctive feel, with recurring themes and images appearing in multiple poems.
Her early work didn't speak to me, and so I read it fairly superficially. But then suddenly, most of the poems about her family in the book Ararat engaged me, as did the nature poems of The Wild Iris. My interest tapered off during subsequent books, only to return again for the final book in this collection, A Village Life.
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