#Nobel Prize Louise Glück

Collection: Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014)

Promise to read more of L. Glück…she is worth the reading time.

RIP  1943-2023

Poem:  PARABLE

1. Parable should reveal a clear moral or religious lesson.
2. The lesson is there…but if I read this poem quickly
3. …I probably would have missed  it!
4. The poem contains three long sentences.
5. It starts out very vaguely…
6. who  is “ourselves” and  who is “we”?
7. Provided there’s a good narrative, poems make a lot of sense.
8. …but starting out this way really dampens  my desire to read any further!

1. This is just the first poem in the collection so
2. I hope the USA poet laureate 2003-2004 will
3. surprise me later in the book.
4. The words do not linger in my mind.
5. I miss a feeling of tension and powerful images.
6. This is not my idea of a great writing:
7. “…like soldiers in a useless war”.
8. I dissected the poem by typing it out…line for line.
9. That’s the only way I can force my mind to concentrate on the poem.

1. Glück introduces us to  pilgrims (I think) with the following:
2. Question: Should we reject worldly goods?
3. Question: Should we insist on having a purpose?
4. = not be distracted by gain and loss
5. = let our bodies be free to move easily.

1. Glûck uses opposites:
2. Pilgrims – wanderers
3. Flexible – resigned
4. Souls – bodies
5. Gain – loss
6. Peaceful pilgrims – compared with warring soldiers
7. First stage of journey (dynamic)
8. alluding to living in mountainous area, facing the elements, rain, flooding, snow 
9. …contradiction follows closely with the words: 
10. “…we never moved”. (static )

Conclusion:

1. Without moving:…those who believed in having a purpose 
2. …this was the purpose. (huh?)
3. “We had aged without travelling forward or sideward.”

1. Those who believed in remaining free to encounter truth
2. …felt truth had been revealed. (huh?)

1. This was NOT one of the best poems I’ve ever read.
2. I expected much more from a Nobel Prize winner
3. …and especially the first poem in a collection should be
4. “the  hook” to entice me to continue reading.
5. I had to push myself through the poem
6. …and took me a few hours just to read, analyse and
7. gather my thoughts.

Last thoughts:

1. I could have read 100 pages in a book in the same timeline!
2. Feel I did not get enough “bang for my buck” with this poem.
3. Not much return on my investment and effort.
4. I will finish this collection in the course of the summer
5. …taking one “poem at a time”!