Louise Gluck
Louise Gluck
Louise Elisabeth Glückis an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003, after serving as a Special Bicentennial Consultant three years prior in 2000...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth22 April 1943
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
taken numbness costumes
I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added.
mother children sleep
Like a child, the earth's going to sleep, or so the story goes. But I'm not tired, it says. And the mother says, You may not be tired but I'm tired
children sadness light
I’m like the child who buries her head in the pillow so as not to see, the child who tells herself that light causes sadness—
winter thinking earth
I think I can remember being dead. Many times, in winter, I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him, how can I endure the earth?
girl grief moving
Without thinking, I knelt in the grass, like someone meaning to pray. When I tried to stand again, I couldn't move, my legs were utterly rigid. Does grief change you like that? Through the birches, I could see the pond. The sun was cutting small white holes in the water. I got up finally; I walked down to the pond. I stood there, brushing the grass from my skirt, watching myself, like a girl after her first lover turning slowly at the bathroom mirror, naked, looking for a sign. But nakedness in women is always a pose. I was not transfigured. I would never be free.
able indifference hunger
I pretended indifference…even in the presence of love, in the presence of hunger. And the more deeply I felt, the less able I was to respond.
may lasts life-is
The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last.
vocabulary silence wish
I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence. The unsaid, for me, exerts great power: often I wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary. It is analogous to the unseen...
saws firsts certain
At first I saw you everywhere. Now only in certain things, at longer intervals.
art swim desire
It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.
letting-go sublime age
I caution you as I was never cautioned: You will never let go, you will never be satiated. You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger. Your body will age, you will continue to need. You will want the earth, then more of the earth-- Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond. It is encompassing, it will not minister. Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you. It will not keep you alive.
memories childhood world
We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.