Reviews
I will need to read this again outdoors… perspective shifts between god, the author, and the plants in her garden; they all create each other
My heart sunk when it ended, it should've gone on forever
she writes the god i learned as a child, the anger, the fear, the gentleness—the sorrow and the love.
5 stars simply isn’t enough stars
“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
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.
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 blue iris * trillium think what i understand already. i woke up ignorant in a forest; only a moment ago, i didn’t know my voice if one were given to me would be so full of grief, my sentences like cried strung together. i didn’t even know i felt grief until that word came, until i felt rain streaming from me * love in moonlight sometimes a man or woman forces his despair on another person, which is called baring the heart, alternately, baring the soul— meaning for this moment they acquired souls— * the red poppy The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, i have those; they govern me … What should such glory be if not a heart? * the silver lily after the first cries, doesn’t joy, like fear, make no sound? * the white lilies Hush, beloved. it doesn’t matter to me how many summers i live to return: this one summer we have entered eternity. i felt your two hands bury me to release its splendour.
Highlights
I cannot love
what I can’t conceive, and you disclose
virtually nothing:
Matins (12)
You wanted to be born; I let you be born.
When has my grief ever gotten
in the way of your pleasure?
End of Winter
This is how you live when you have a cold heart.
As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.
Lamium
"White over white, the moon rose over the birch tree."
(The Silver Lily)
"Twilight, then early evening. Fireflies
in the room, flickering here and there, here and there,
and summer’s deep sweetness filling the open window."
(Lullaby)
"Blaze of the red cheek, glory
of the open throat, white,
spotted with crimson."
(Vespers)
"as though you were making a sign after all
to convince me you too couldn’t survive here
or to show me you are not the light I called to
but the blackness behind it."
(The White Rose)
"Look at you, blindly clinging to earth
as though it were the vineyards of heaven
while the fields go up in flames around you—"
(Harvest)
"If you would open your eyes
you would see me, you would see
the emptiness of heaven
mirrored on earth, the fields
vacant again, lifeless, covered with snow—"
(End of Summer)
"Say frankly what any fool
could read in your face: it makes sense
to avoid us, to resist
nostalgia. It is
not modern enough, the sound the wind makes
stirring a meadow of daisies: the mind
cannot shine following it. And the mind
wants to shine, plainly, as
machines shine, and not
grow deep, as, for example, roots."
(Daisies)
"your incidental souls
fixed like telescopes on some
enlargement of yourselves—"
(Midsummer)
"by what logic
do you hoard
a single tendril
of something you want
dead?"
(Clover)
My great happiness
is the sound your voice makes
calling to me even in despair; my sorrow
that I cannot answer you
in speech you accept as mine.
What could such glory be if not a heart?