Background
Louise Gluck is (as of this writing) the most recent American Nobel Laureate (U-S-A! U-S-A!). She spent her childhood as a second generation American from Jewish immigrant families on Long Island in New York City. The more suburban life reflected her family’s comfort and education (and the now famous factoid that her uncle invented the Xacto Knife, and her dad helped sell it). While she was a gifted student, her own struggles with mental health and anorexia led her to pursue only the classes she wanted (rather than a formal degree program) at Sarah Lawrence and Columbia University.
Those courses clearly worked for her as she soon saw her work published in a host of popular American magazines throughout the 70s and 80s before starting to release poetry collections. Much of her work reflected the darkness of her experiences and mental health needs, but always in ways that amplified some connections to universal questions and experiences. The Swedish Academy felt the same way giving her the 2020 Nobel Prize “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”
Works
I set up a Fable Book club to read one of Gluck’s more recent collections with 2014’s Faithful and Virtuous Night (a play on words with those noble k-nights…get it?), and while it was mostly me shouting into the void (you know, for a change of pace), there were some solid pieces I took away with me.
Midnight
Speak to me, aching heart: what
Ridiculous errand are you inventing for yourself
Weeping in the dark garage
With your sack of garbage: it is not your job
To take out the garbage, it is your job
To empty the dishwasher. You are showing off
Again,
Exactly as you did in childhood–where
Is your sporting side, your famous
Ironic detachment? A little moonlight hits
The broken window, a little summer moonlight,
Tender
Murmurs from the earth with its ready
Sweetnesses–
Is this the way you communicate
With your husband, not answering
When he calls, or is this the way the heart
Behaves when it grieves: it wants to be
Alone with the garbage? If I were you,
I’d think ahead. After fifteen years,
His voice could be getting tired; some night
If you don’t answer, someone else will answer.
A Work of Fiction
As I turned over the last page, after many nights, a wave of sorrow envel-
oped me. Where had they all gone, these people who had seemed so real?
To distract myself, I walked out into the night; instinctively, I lit a cigarette.
In the dark, the cigarette glowed, like a fire lit by a survivor. But who would
see this light, this small dot among the infinite stars? I stood a while in the
dark, the cigarette glowing and growing small, each breath patiently de-
stroying me. How small it was, how brief. Brief, brief, but inside me now,
which the stars could never be.
Message
Gluck’s work is often grounded in slice of life observations, little banal moments that might otherwise pass you by but contain within them the kernel or nugget of deeper understanding. Her tendency is not to simply say it, but instead to present it, consider it, question it and leave it to the reader to ponder further. You can find meaning through reflection during life’s little moments.
Position: #2 Right Back
Like Hermann Hesse (who I read around the same time), I felt pretty nonplussed about Gluck’s work. There were moments sure, but nothing that really grabbed me or stood out. She seemed to constantly be asking questions that sometimes connected, but most of the time…didn’t.
This all reminds me of nothing so much as a wing player who makes frequent hopeful crosses and attempts only to find nobody at home on the other end (I had tickets to watch Adrian Heath era Minnesota United…if you know, you know). By asking the questions again and again, there’s a little hope that maybe, just maybe, one will connect and hit home…but it’s much more of a law of large numbers issue than supreme talent. I decided to put Gluck back in the formation because her style strikes me as far more traditional than innovative, and I’m not sure she would have the mentality to cut in like an attacker might. So like Romaine Metanire of old…I’m putting her in at Right Back.
Maybe this is too harsh, as ever I’m open to other interpretations.
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