#louis gluck

[vampyroslesboss]

Louis Glück

[trailofleaves]

Night covers the pond with its wing. Under the ringed moon I can make out your face swimming among minnows and the small echoing stars. In the night air the surface of the pond is metal.

Within, your eyes are open. They contain a memory I recognize, as though we had been children together. Our ponies grazed on the hill, they were gray with white markings. Now they graze with the dead who wait like children under their granite breastplates, lucid and helpless:

The hills are far away. They rise up blacker than childhood. What do you think of, lying so quietly by the water? When you look that way I want to touch you, but do not, seeing as in another life we were of the same blood.

— The Pond, Louise Gluck

[sourabha]

Glück, a companion for this evening, a companion forever.

It’s a bit terrifying to read several of her poems one after another. It’s as if she’s whispering in your ear all these strange things that occur only to her, revealing herself wholly as a human being — that thing we’re often unsure of doing even with our most loved ones. What temerity to do so on an empty page, then, spilling like water before strangers. What. A. Poet.

[speakyetpause]

Snowdrops

— Louise Glück

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

I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn't expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to respond again, remembering after so long how to open again in the cold light of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

[yemadetinta]

The Untrustworthy Speaker

Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken. I don’t see anything objectively. I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist. When I speak passionately, that’s when I’m least to be trusted. It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight. In the end, they’re wasted— I never see myself, standing on the front steps, holding my sister’s hand. That’s why I can’t account for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends. In my own mind, I’m invisible: that’s why I’m dangerous. People like me, who seem selfless, we’re the cripples, the liars; we’re the ones who should be factored out in the interest of truth. When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges. A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers. Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas red and bright pink. If you want the truth, you have to close yourself to the older daughter, block her out: when a living thing is hurt like that, in its deepest workings, all function is altered. That’s why I’m not to be trusted. Because a wound to the heart is also a wound to the mind.

-Louis Gluck

[japkevanuffelen]

Louis Gluck, Poems 1962-2012, 2012

[xshayarsha]

The world was whole because it shattered. When it shattered, then we knew what it was.

Louise Glück, from Vita Nova; Formaggio.

[somstory]

I dreamed I was kidnapped. That means I knew what love was, how it places the soul in jeopardy.

Louise Glück, excerpt of “Timor Mortis,” in Vita Nova

[anastasiaoftheironwood]

The Evening Star ~ Louise Glück

Tonight, for the first time in many years, there appeared to me again a vision of the earth’s splendor: [more]

[mortalpractice]

Noah says depressives hate the spring, imbalance between the inner and the outer world. I make another case—being depressed, yes, but in a sense passionately attached to the living tree, my body actually curled in the split trunk, almost at peace,           in the evening rain almost able to feel sap frothing and rising

Louise Glück, from “Matins,” The Wild Iris

[thecourageofobscurity]

I remember peace of a kind I never knew again

Louise Glück, Echoes

[aloreth]

Purple Bathing Suit - A poem by Louis Glück

I like watching you garden with your back to me in your purple bathing suit: your back is my favorite part of you, the part furthest away from your mouth.

You might give some thought to that mouth. Also to the way you weed, breaking the grass off at ground level when you should pull it by the roots.

How many times do I have to tell you how the grass spreads, your little pile notwithstanding, in a dark mass which by smoothing over the surface you have finally fully obscured. Watching you

stare into space in the tidy rows of the vegetable garden, ostensibly working hard while actually doing the worst job possible, I think

you are a small irritating purple thing and I would like to see you walk off the face of the earth because you are all that's wrong with my life and I need you and I claim you.

[rivegauche]

louis glück mentions chickens a lot... girl u ok

[puritan-magazine]

Oddity List #23: Poems about school

As the school year descends upon us, this week’s oddity list is a compilation of poems about school and education.

1) “The School Children” by Louise Glück 

The children go forward with their little satchels. And all morning the mothers have laboured  to gather the late apples, red and gold, like words of another language.

And on the other shore  are those who wait behind great desks  to receive these offerings.

How orderly they are — the nails  on which the children hang  their overcoats of blue or yellow wool.

And the teachers shall instruct them in silence  and the mothers shall scour the orchards for a way out, drawing to themselves the gray limbs of the fruit trees bearing so little ammunition.

2) “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you—  Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) Me—who? Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white— yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That’s American. Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that’s true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me— although you’re older—and white— and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

3) “Sick” by Shel Silverstein

“I cannot go to school today," Said little Peggy Ann McKay. “I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps. My mouth is wet, my throat is dry, I’m going blind in my right eye. My tonsils are as big as rocks, I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox And there’s one more--that’s seventeen, And don’t you think my face looks green? My leg is cut--my eyes are blue-- It might be instamatic flu. I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke, I’m sure that my left leg is broke-- My hip hurts when I move my chin, My belly button’s caving in, My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained, My ‘pendix pains each time it rains. My nose is cold, my toes are numb. I have a sliver in my thumb. My neck is stiff, my voice is weak, I hardly whisper when I speak. My tongue is filling up my mouth, I think my hair is falling out. My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight, My temperature is one-o-eight. My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear, There is a hole inside my ear. I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what? What’s that? What’s that you say? You say today is. . .Saturday? G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

4) “Sonnet on School Life” by Dr. John Celes

First day we stepped into a school was great- In uniform with school-bag, looking cute! We could not walk or run and had a slate; We learnt to read and write and be not mute.

We learnt the Alphabets: count one to ten! We ate so happily when school-bell rung; Our teachers taught us how to hold the pen; We can’t forget those days when we were young.

Our knowledge improved slowly every day; Afilled with joy in hearts, we went to play; Our teachers taught us manners and to pray; The fees- our parents somehow tried to pay.

Although some hours, some days, we may detest, The years we spent in school are sure the best!

5) “The Education of the Young Mind” by Peter Stavropoulos

The education of the young mind Took place Behind closed doors Because that mind - Initially free - Had to be Taught The value of freedom.

The education of the young mind Took place In an open space Because that mind - Once closed - Had to be Set free To explore itself.

[modest-moon]

Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken. I don’t see anything objectively. I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist. When I speak passionately, that’s when I’m least to be trusted. It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight. In the end, they’re wasted— I never see myself, standing on the front steps, holding my sister’s hand. That’s why I can’t account for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends. In my own mind, I’m invisible: that’s why I’m dangerous. People like me, who seem selfless, we’re the cripples, the liars; we’re the ones who should be factored out in the interest of truth. When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges. A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers. Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas red and bright pink. If you want the truth, you have to close yourself to the older daughter, block her out: when a living thing is hurt like that, in its deepest workings, all function is altered. That’s why I’m not to be trusted. Because a wound to the heart is also a wound to the mind.

The Untrustworthy Speaker, Louise Glück

[somstory]

Early Darkness - Louis Glück

How can you say earth should give me joy? Each thing born is my burden; I cannot succeed with all of you. And you would like to dictate to me, you would like to tell me who among you is most valuable, who most resembles me. And you hold up as an example the pure life, the detachment you struggle to acheive-- How can you understand me when you cannot understand yourselves? Your memory is not powerful enough, it will not reach back far enough-- Never forget you are my children. You are not suffering because you touched each other but because you were born, because you required life separate from me.