Name: The Wild Iris
Rating: 4.1 (40 reviews)
ISBN: 9780063117648

Louise Glück

This collection of stunningly beautiful poems encompasses the natural, human, and spiritual realms, and is bound together by the universal themes of time and mortality. With clarity and sureness of craft, Gluck's poetry questions, explores, and finally celebrates the ordeal of being alive.

The Wild Iris

Matins You want to know how I spend my time? I walk the front lawn, pretending to be weeding. You ought to know I'm never weeding, on my knees, pulling clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact I'm looking for courage, for some evidence my life will change, though it takes forever, checking each clump for the symbolic leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already the leaves turning, always the sick trees going first, the dying turning brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform their curfew of music. You want to see my hands? As empty now as at the first note. Or was the point always to continue without a sign?

she writes the god i learned as a child, the anger, the fear, the gentleness—the sorrow and the love. 

miya

Kristen Thomas

“Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you.”

i wanted to enjoy this more than i did, but i did enjoy it

mira lee

Katarina

I could not express how grateful I am to read Glück in this period of time. Her voice is magnificent, true, and haunting. It haunts me.

Kate

So many intricate and stunning poems in here. Some of the poems did fall a little flat or go over my head, but the majority of poems in this collection are exquisite and definitely warrant five stars.

The Wild Iris

Reviews

Highlights