Comments on: A Village Life

By: Keith Krugerud

Keith Krugerud — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:47:58 +0000

In a world of constant suffering and struggling nothing in this life is easy. In a series of soon to be published essay, like for example in “Tributaries”, I focus on and present her apparent id,eas of travailing along these avenues, “like the Buddhists” who travel along their eight-fold path, enduring and witnessing changes and impermanence. To be sure, at her late age, both change and impermanence have a very sharp and sensitive affect. They must more and more poignantly cause anxiety and concern over “death and uncertainty”. But apart from that personal tragedy, life is full of misery. Everyone longs for happiness. But everyone is too preoccupied with daily activities in this world and too attached to objects both physical and mental. And since all these objects and activities in this world always change and are impermanent, no-body will ever find true happiness here and now. And yet, along these avenues she seems to find new ways of seeing things; then acts accordingly. Thus to truly understand this, she seems to receive this sudden jolt or inspiration that sets her on the correct avenue toward “Liberty” (VL 6) –she seems to see the cherub piss on her yet inspire her to leave this particular setting and head to a place within the hills and home. Indeed, this rather pessimistic view seems to correlate with the negative views found in Buddhism, seeing life as all suffering. But this view misses the point. To be sure, she views things both realistically and objectively. On the one hand, within this fountain setting, she reflects and envisions the meaninglessness of trying to find happiness in this world so unreal, so romantic. So, on the other hand, she follows the avenues in their reverse way, in their way to end the suffering. But, along the way and during this visit in her life, she still has to face the pain and disappointments within this mundane and cruel world. That is, she has to start from where she is. She must examine her own life very objectively. Hence, she seems to do just that through the various characters clinging round the fountain – she must see various aspects of her own life both past and present. Furthermore, she must recognize her pain. She sees all the good things in this life ending or changing: children grow up and face the world; love ones pass away; she loses vigor and youthful beauty. All these changes create new pains. And at a deeper level, she is aware of an all-encompassing pain. In each human being, this suffering dwells in his or her form, feeling, perception, phantasms, and consciousness. But recognizing all these negativities: views, emotions, sufferings, behaviors, she starts to see things more positively. And then she transforms the positives into perfection and permanence. To end, my only criticism toward “A Village Life”, is Gluck sees too evident on the concepts of Buddhism, not to mention an explicit statement “like the Buddhists” (VL 53).

By: Sabrina Love

Sabrina Love — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 01:48:46 +0000

I’m glad to hear this – I think Glück’s poems are trails.

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:54:36 +0000

If ‘Ms.” Jordan is right…

maybe Louise Gluck appeals to those readers (& there are a lot of them) who were trained in high school to experience reading poetry as a form of punishment. ?

By: Jeanette L. Miller

Jeanette L. Miller — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:33:06 +0000

Jordan, you don’t seem to “get” Louise Gluck — the mythology, the willingness to experience and chronicle all of life — not just the pretty, little happenings.

Not liking sex isn’t the point of “Mock Orange”. Believing that one can access the way to wholeness through another is.

By: Elizabeth Macklin

Elizabeth Macklin — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:58:26 +0000

Ms. Davis is ahead of me on two counts, since I haven’t read either A Village Life (though I’ve read many of the poems that went into it, in magazines and journals) or the Neil Strauss “negging” book, either. (I hadn’t seen that term before; awfully ugly word, though.) But several sentences in her essay brought me up short and I wanted in the meantime to speak to them.

* “After The Wild Iris, Glück’s work takes a turn for the vague….”—Can any book of poetry possibly have been less vague than Meadowlands (1997, five years after Wild Iris)? I wondered how she would square that, or if she might care to address it.

* At the “no signal from earth / will ever reach the sun” point, does a literal-minded reading make for true “untruth” on Glück’s part?

* I searched, and there were no rhetorical questions in any of the Glück quotes Ms. Davis makes use of; the only questions were her own, and they themselves seemed largely rhetorical.

But, without reading Glück’s book, all this is quibbling, though also querying. My real mission is to read the book. Given the poems I’ve seen since The Seven Ages (2001), particularly the ones that address a kind of will, or bent, toward community, I have been wanting to get a sense of all of them together in one place; or a wholer sense in detail of what has been on her mind in the meantime. Exactly because she has seemed able to contemplate, and record, without being “freaked out,” and so has (to my ear) been “overpowering” for that very reason.

In a way, the essay reminded me of reviews that appeared when Margaret Atwood’s novel Cat’s Eye came out. In retrospect—sometimes even at the time—they looked more and more like blaming the messenger. As for Davis’s question “Do we still have to listen?” I felt that until I’d read the book, I could only answer, with some kind of impatience, No, of course not. Do as you please.

Though it was a well-done, and in many ways a quite personal, review, I wished it had taken in a still greater overview of Glück’s work, and had moved more imaginatively within Glück’s own context. It did ramp up my curiosity, though, to the point of going out and buying the book, and thank you very much for that.

By: Alison Carb Sussman

Alison Carb Sussman — Tue, 04 May 2010 02:02:07 +0000

I think Louise Gluck is a great poet. All great poets have their weaknesses. Perhaps you are judging her too harshly, too unfairly.

By: Anita Clearfield

Anita Clearfield — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:42:09 +0000

Your reviewer doesn’t identify with the content so pans the poetry…doesn’t seem like a very “literary” approach to reviewing.
I don’t think Gluck is “negging.” She’s layering imagery that conveys an outsider’s look at a place — and even one’s life. Sorry it’s not “happy” enough for the the reviewer, but has more truthfulness in form (the wandering line that comes up against bald statements) than his fear that she doesn’t like sex enough.

By: D. E. Steward

D. E. Steward — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:22:02 +0000

There are many varieties of poetic alienation, and as Jordan Davis argues convincingly, Louise Glück’s brand is not one of the most effective. The last time I heard her read I felt that she would have been capable of throwing a live grenade out into the audience.