When I was an undergrad, I thought I was pretty hot shit--as many such English majors do. I presented what I thought was a work of genius to one of my professors, even though it was not in her bailiwick, expecting to be hailed as a "new find" in all of the poetry journals, and awaited her feedback. Obviously, my expectations were off base.
"I feel like it's referencing something to which I don't have access," she offered. I thought it was clear: the poem was about my feelings during my Grandmother's funeral. I realized much later in life that she didn't mean the setting or the topic of the poem, but its point of view. Whether it was because she didn't have access to the grief I was trying to express, or I had failed at capturing it, is irrelevant. As an act of expression, in this case, it had simply failed, and I was appropriately cowed.
As I read this collection by Nobel Laureate Glück, I am reminded of that moment twenty years ago. In my case, it could easily have been my failure as a poet that inspired the reaction it did. In this case, I would say that the poet's credentials are sufficiently established, such that I have to look at my part as a reader.
It would not be quite accurate to say that these poems "referencing something to which I don't have acccess" is a failure on my part as a reader. It is a reflection of the two very different worlds and experiences the poet and I live in. Glück is a poet of motherhood, sisterhood, daughterhood, wifehood, and many other things that are locked to my understanding on anything other than a surface level. I can access them when the writer is clear in her intention, but such is not the poet's way--at least not this poet. I'm sure she has succeeded in making these experiences bloom for some readers; not only the Nobel Committee, but my own sister testify as much. Nonetheless, even when developing themes that I should know well, gardening for example, there is the ghost of a yonic truth that taunts me.
The exception is when she writes of a certain phase of adulthood, one that I happen to be in right now. The fact that she would have been ten years older at the time of the publishing is an omen of the fact that this is a point of no return. To me this period is turbulent, aggressive, but she speaks of how gentle it can be, which is a source of comfort. She writes, for example in "The Muse of Happiness" of ". . . the insecurity of great hope / suddenly gone." As I approach 50, in fact as I am breathing down its neck, the train of my youth has not only left the station; I can no longer hear its whistle in the distance. With it, it has taken all the lovers I might have had, all the paths I might have trod, and all the people I might have been. People say it is never too late. They lie.
But she offers, instead, new hopes, new joys. "Is it possible we have finally paid / bitterly enough?" What a thought! " . . . a solitude / not to be feared . . ." How necessary! Hopes that fade make room for new blossoms, and, as in "Mitosis", the mind can finally do more than want. "Limitless world! The vistas clear, the clouds risen."
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