Episode 9 Season 4

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JOE: Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by the team@poemanalysis.com and Poetry+. I'm Joe, and I'm here with my co-host Maiya, for a very special episode of Beyond the Verse, because it is our 50th episode. Yes, that is five zero. I'm sure Maiya and I are gonna get into this later.

But before we begin, I just wanna say a massive thanks to everyone who supported the podcast so far. Whether you've been here since the very beginning or whether this is your very first episode, we are very happy to have you here. Today's episode is gonna be a wonderful one 'cause we're talking about one of my very favorite poets, Louise Glück.

And over the course of today's episode, we're gonna mention some of her poems, talk a little bit about her career, and focus on a variety of themes, including mythic hauntings in her poetry, the essence of grief, and the process of finding your poetic voice. But before we get into some of those themes and ideas, Maiya, can you tell us a little bit more about, Glück's life and her career?

MAIYA: Well, thank you, Joe. I'd love to get into her life. So she's actually one of the more [00:01:00] contemporary poets that we've spoken about on our podcast so far, and it's gonna be a really nice change of pace, I think from the more traditional poets we've looked at. Her work is so, so different to, I think, especially the last few episodes we've done. So Louise Glück was born in 1943 in Long Island, New York. She grew up in a really culturally engaged family. Her father was really interested in classical literature, which as we will see, goes on to shape a lot of her later work where she really delves into kind of mythic representations, retellings, and it's such a wonderful through line.

I think from taking something that was so important in her childhood all the way through to the poems that were really celebrated later in her life. So, as I say, she was born in 1943, grew up in this family home. There was some kind of complexities that came about. So she actually had an older sister who passed away before she was born. This is a recurring theme that we see throughout some of her later work where that presence seems to haunt the narrative a little bit.

You know, she suffered in the fifties and [00:02:00] sixties with disordered eating. She was sent through psychoanalysis and what we'll see as we go through some of her work today, I believe is what we would kind of term a post confessionalism. She was trying to carve out a space that was kind of separate from the confessional poets, but you will see that a lot of her work is very introspective, very grounded in her personal emotions and feelings, and I think it's such a credit to the work that we'll talk about today when you see how that psychoanalysis may have influenced some of that work so because of her struggles kind of through the fifties and sixties, she didn't go to university, but she did attend a variety of workshops, primarily at Columbia, which is where she nurtured her poetic talent. Her key publications we're talking about her first collection, Firstborn in 1968, House on Marshland in 1975, The Triumph of Achilles.

One of the poems we'll talk about today in 1985, The Wild Iris in 1992. So all of these collections she was publishing pretty consistently through her lifetime. she was awarded poet laureate of the US in 2003 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020.

So we're [00:03:00] talking about a poet that is incredibly celebrated. I mean, she's widely regarded as one of the most influential contemporary US poets . But Joe, before we get into, you know, her body of work, let's really talk about the development of her voice.

I think she has one of the most unique contemporary voices that, as I say, we've explored even on this podcast, So I'd love to dive a little bit deeper into where you think that unique voice comes from, And how you think she developed that? Was that out of her childhood? Was it out of the psychoanalysis? Was it a whole litany of factors that are unrelated to that? I'm so curious to know your opinions. 

JOE: Well, thanks, Maiya. That was a really, really good grounding in the biography and the kind of facts of her life. Before we get into unpicking, what those facts might represent, it's such an interesting question and I, I mean, I find Louise Glück a fascinating writer, for so many reasons. But it's worth pointing out, I think, and emphasizing the point you've made about where this career ends, you know, the pinnacle of her career, the Nobel Prize in literature in 2020.

She was just the 16th woman ever to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. You know, we're talking about one of the all time greats, but when we go back into that early career, what [00:04:00] really strikes me, and, you know, I think it should be a really, reassuring sign to any aspiring poets out there that. Even the greats take time to find their voice. That doesn't mean there aren't brilliant things going on in those early collections we talked about, but really when we're talking about Glück's career, the kind of takeoff point, the point at which she starts to be regarded as one of the preeminent poets of her generation is the mid 1980s, really that 1985 collection, The Triumph of Achilles , as you mentioned.

We're gonna talk about the title poem of that collection in a moment. you know, that is written, when she's in her early forties. It's nearly two decades after publication of her first collection, and yet that's the moment where really she achieves poetic takeoff. And there's so much in there that I find interesting because you're right, this is a life that in many ways is a fairly contented life, with good relationships.

But like everybody, her life was marked by moments of suffering, moments of loss. You mentioned the struggle with disordered eating. the sort of spectral presence of her elder sister. in 1980, her house in Vermont burned to the ground and she lost almost all of her earthly possessions and these themes of loss and [00:05:00] thinking about control and thinking about how you can overcome loss or whether it's possible to overcome loss.

these percolate all the way through her career in ways that I find remarkable. One of my favorite things about her writing is this treatment of the mythic. She's one of the truly great poets when it comes to reimagining, reconfiguring classical stories and characters from Greek mythology and other canonical sources.

We're gonna get into this in a moment, but that ability to recycle, I think is really, really fascinating. And the final thing before I throw back to you, Maiya, because it pertains to that first collection she published that you mentioned Firstborn in 1968.

Critics at the time praised lots of what was going on in that collection, but there was a sense to which she was perhaps self-conscious and struggling to break away from, as you mentioned earlier on the confessional movement that had dominated the early 1960s in American poetry. We're talking about Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and anyone who's interested to know more about the confessional movement.

You can go back and look into the Beyond the Verse archive, the 49 previous episodes we've [00:06:00] recorded up to this point. There's lots of other confessionalists in there, I'd love to throw to you and get your thoughts on this, because obviously every great artist on some level is a sponge. You know, they're absorbing influences around them sometimes to be inspired by them, sometimes to reject them but how difficult is it when you are trying to carve out your own voice and make your own mark as a poet to shut the door to those other influences and not let them creep into your poems?

MAIYA: it's actually a really tough question. It's something that I spent a lot of time thinking about, especially when I was a younger poet and I was just starting out. I mean, I had the great pleasure or maybe the great embarrassment of being able to have access to all of my old poetry journals from being, 13, 14, 50.

And you can imagine there were some real gems in there. but one of the things that I found really fascinating was that. As I was working through reading my own poetry, I could see who I'd read and how it had started to influence me. You know, when I started reading Sylvia Plath, that confessional element started to creep into my work.

When I started reading Danez Smith, for example, their [00:07:00] work had a real influence on how I created form and like texture in my poems. and I definitely find as a writer, as a poet, that. It's very, very hard to completely distinguish yourself. I think part of your job, as you say, poets or sponges, right?

Part of your job as a poet is to honor the legacy of the people that inspire you whilst also creating your own space. That's an impossible task. It's so tough to put pen to page and feel like you've created something original because there will always be someone that's created a phrasing that you wish you'd have made up.

There's someone that's gonna create a form that you wish you'd have thought of, and I think what you can see with Louise Glücks work, and you know, we're talking about some of her later poems, really today, where her voice is very much solidified, very cemented, is that you cannot have that voice without its reliance on your earlier work. You cannot have growth and development without making mistakes, for example, without having, those poems that maybe you think, [00:08:00] oh, I wish I'd never published that. Because ultimately that feeds into who you are and what your body of work looks like. For me, I'm so grateful for the people that influenced me, the poets that I read, the people that gifted me poems and, edited my work in its early stages because. It gave me such an understanding of how to create in a way that feels authentic to me. Because when you get feedback, you don't always have to take it.

I remember being told by an editor when I was, probably 14 and I submitted to a massive poetry magazine. I was told to be more vague. I was told that my work was too specific and I remember the word vague standing out like in bold on that email, and there was a bunch of constructive feedback in there.

But that was the one thing that I knew I didn't want to do. I didn't want to write poetry that was just easy to publish, applicable to the masses. I wanted to write things that were deeply personal to me and and put 'em on the page. So it's such a fascinating I think when we talk about someone who is as as Louise Glück is and as celebrated for her work [00:09:00] because. What she has done, I think as you look through her career is only sought to solidify her own voice more and more. and now, although, you know, unfortunately she passed away in, in 2023, we can now look back and say she is this incredible poet who has her own voice. But she probably didn't feel like that by the time she was even 40.

You know, she'd published three collections, and yet she hadn't reached the pinnacle of her career yet you are always wanting to strive for better, be better, publish more, have more people buy your collections. Success is very easy to see in hindsight. So I think the question sort of turns back around on itself there.

I guess, Joe, which maybe is a slightly roundabout way of not really answering what you asked me, but. How important is it to separate yourself? Of course, it's very important to curate your own voice, but how do you know you've curated your own voice until someone else tells you that you have? Because you are always going to be an amalgamation of everyone you've read people's advice, how people have shaped you, your upbringing. it's a messy context really to be a poet, I think.

JOE: was a really, really [00:10:00] fascinating insight. I really appreciate that. And it's interesting you talk about how that amalgamation is kind of the key of, great poetic expression. Ultimately, it is about finding the balance between the different influences, the different contextual factors in your life, your own personal interests and, the poetry that comes after that is obviously unique to each individual.

I'm curious in the case of Louise Glück, that one of the things she's now best known as, as I mentioned, is this. Interest in mythology, and this is really persistent to the first poem we're gonna be looking at today, The Triumph of Achilles , because that's something that goes right back to her childhood, where as you mentioned, her parents taught her these Greek myths and told her these stories.

And you know, we've said so many times on the podcast, what a rich body of work there is when it comes to these classical stories, these percolate characters, there are so many of them, and they're so complex that they can be continually reimagined. And that's what's going on in this first poem.

Now for any listeners who aren't aware, Achilles is one of the kind of preeminent figures of classical mythology. He's the great Greek hero in the Trojan War. Who is a demigod, kind of semi divine, but ultimately, [00:11:00] he chooses to go and fight in the Trojan War despite being told that it will mean that he dies young, but his name will live forever.

The other option being he doesn't go to fight. He will live a long and happy life and his children and grandchildren will remember him. But ultimately, like 99.9% of everyone who's ever lived his name will, fade after his death. And ultimately he chooses to kind of make himself immortal through his own mortality.

And that complex relationship between physical mortality and the immortality of your name and your legacy is something we're gonna get into, but perhaps in 2026. Achilles is best known by some of our listeners, I'm sure, for his relationship with the figure of Patroclus.

Now over the centuries, Patroclus has been interpreted as a cousin of Achilles, a friend of Achilles, a lover of Achilles. And that relationship has been dealt with so beautifully in the works of, for example, Madeleine Miller and you know, many others beside.

But this poem takes a slightly different look at that relationship. And I'm just gonna read the first stanza, ' cause it really gives a flavor of what Louise Glück is doing here. So this is the opening stanza of The Triumph of [00:12:00] Achilles. In the story of Patroclus. No one survives, not even Achilles, who was nearly a God.

Patroclus resembled him. They wore the same armor. Now Maiya, I'd love to get your thoughts on this, but before I throw to you what I would like to just draw, listeners’ attention to there, because it's so subtle and yet so affecting is a poem. And remember a collection that is titled The Triumph of Achilles.

You are expecting it to follow the same thread as every other engagement with this story. 'cause this poem was published in the 1980s, long before Madeline Miller's novel. We're expecting it to center the experience of Achilles. That's what's being set up in this title. And yet, right from the first line, we are told in the story of Patroclus.

So that decision not to necessarily reframe anything significant about the characters, you're not changing their relationship necessarily from what's been told before, but you're changing the center. The perspective and the decision to center Patroclus, who is a less outwardly heroic character, who is less impressive, less celebrated in the Iliad,

I think is a really, really interesting choice.

[00:13:00] And it throws the whole poem off kilter because suddenly we're being encouraged to look at the same information, the same characters in a fundamentally different way. And that subtle change I find really sets the tone for what the poem's going to go on to do. But Maiya. Whether it's in that first stanza or elsewhere on the per, where would you like to look?

MAIYA: Well, where I'd like to start really, I think is the context around this opening paragraph. So the narrative of this poem is effectively a retelling of the loss that Achilles experienced when he lost his, you know, lover, his friend, his partner, Patroclus.

And effectively what had happened was that Achilles had decided in a, in a moment of rage that he wasn't going to go into battle. So in order to inspire the soldiers, Patroclus had decided to don Achilles armor and go out himself. Unfortunately, this resulted in his kind of untimely death. So there's a secondary narrative at play here, which is that Patroclus was not just lost as a result of the war itself, but directly as a result of the decision that Achilles made.

So I think what this opening stanza [00:14:00] does to really cement that idea is this idea of the same armor. I think what Glück does in such a subtle way, is by noting that they physically can share the same armor. So not only do we have this idea that physically they could kind of fill the same spaces, but also, let's not forget, this is a poem about war. This is a story about war. Achilles is so often depicted as a great hero, but of course you can only be a hero if you fulfill a certain role. and what Glück is indicating that Patroclus could also fill that role. He was also of the ability that Achilles was. so the fact that there is a reversal here, focus on Patroclus rather than Achilles, I think is very, very intentional.

Let's not forget, I love a title. This poem is called The Triumph of Achilles, and yet all we do through this poem is talk about his grief. So his triumph, the celebration of his victory is intimately tied to the loss of his partner. To the loss of this person that meant the world to him. [00:15:00] We end this poem with the idea that Achilles has lost a part of himself, the mortal part of himself, through this grief. So I, I love the idea that Glück is actually with what victory and success means in the grand scheme of things. Because of course you can have triumph, you can have success in war, but at the bottom line, there are so many lives that are lost. As a result of this, she asks us directly in the poem, what were the Greek ships on fire compared to this loss? Individual loss cannot be measured against anything else. Grief can't be measured. and yet so many of the myths we hear about Achilles celebrate his kind of grand life, his successes, his victories. So to pinpoint a moment where he's objectively at his weakest and call that his triumph. I think is really, really beautiful. But Joe, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I mean, this poem is so rich in, imagery as well as mythology.

JOE: I couldn't agree more, and I'd like to go back to that. Line about the armor that you mentioned, because I think it, it's so revealing as you suggested, not only does it elevate [00:16:00] Patroclus, so the kind of status of Achilles able to fit into the same armor, but it also offers that hint of intimacy, that idea of the close connection of the two men, the sharing of this armor.

Of course, in the Iliad, it's not shared. It's kind of stolen. You know, Achilles does not consent to Patroclus taking his armor, and he's furious when he finds out. That's what Patroclus has done. But it offers a hint at the kind of closeness of the relationship. The idea that Patroclus obviously would have access to the tent, access to the armor and all those things, but also it follows that line, Achilles, who was nearly a God.

And this is one of the things this poem does so beautifully, is it plays with that idea of the demigod, the demigod being, a construct in these Greek myths whereby a character might have one parent who is a God of one parent who is mortal, and they are blessed with some of the abilities of the divine, but they are crucially mortal.

And it's a idea that Homer plays within the Iliad and how mortals are not just weaker versions of gods, but we are fundamentally different. Our mortality makes us see the world in different ways. And what I love about this [00:17:00] poem is that like every great exploration of what a demigod is. The bit that you initially want to focus on is the godly nature of these people. That's the thing that makes them different to humans. But the most interesting part of any demigod story isn't the part of that character. This is godly. It is the part that is not. It is the frailty. It is the fragility. It is the fallibility of mortality.

And Achilles makes mistakes in the Iliad and Patroclus who's no demigod makes the same mistakes. That's the thing they share. It's the humanity, the fact that our mistakes can be fatal. And I love the fact that the armor line follows that line because of course, gods have no need of armor if you are immortal, you have no need to defend yourself.

And that reminder of Achilles' mortality is a reminder of the things he shares with Patroclus, not the things that make him different. And I think it, it's just so beautifully constructed. Now you mentioned, some of those later lines in the poem, which are some of my favorites, is a single two line stanza just over halfway through what were the Greek ships on fire compared to this loss?

And what I love about this [00:18:00] is how it's playing with the, the canon I think in some kind of dialogue with the classical stories of the past. For Example, we often think of one of the great sort of lines of the Trojan War being the face that launched a thousand ships the decision, taken by Helen Sparta or the kidnapping, depending on the interpretation of the story, is the thing that kicks off the war to begin with. And she was said to be so beautiful that the Greeks launched a thousand ships to get her back. That line actually comes from Christopher Marlowe's play Dr. Faustus. So, you know, thousands of years after, the Iliad, and yet that becomes really iconic and that evocation of the ships in this poem on fire, some kind of allusion, I think to those lines.

But also we can go even further back. I think that rhetorical question might even be in dialogue with Sappho, the Antoria poem, which Maiya and I have analyzed in the previous episode of Beyond the Verse, where Sappho concludes that poem by claiming I'd rather see her lovely step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and glittering armor.

And again, what we have there is an [00:19:00] individual feeling weighed up against. The masses. objectively thousands of people fighting and dying or thousands of ships on fire is probably worse than individual loss. But as human beings, we don't experience loss via numbers. We experience loss via depth of relationships.

And again, I think what Glück is able to do, like all great interpreters of myth, is she's able to spot the parts of these myths that chime with us as human beings. And that's about depth of relationship. It's about fear of loss, both our own physical frailty and the loss of others.

And I just think this is her, very, very best.

MAIYA: You've picked up on something that I'd really love to talk about in this poem, and it's that sense of mirroring specifically with the public and the private, the intimacy that you mentioned with the wearing the same armor. That suggestion, I think, carries through this poem because our final image of Achilles here is him grieving alone in his tent, inside his tent being, a very intimate space, deeply personal [00:20:00] as compared to, you know, the more open layout of the battlefield.

One of the key aspects that Glück interrogates in this poem is who gets to write history. And why is history written the way it is? She notes in this poem that it's the survivor that writes the history, not the person who was quote unquote abandoned. And I think it speaks to two very different, but very important lessons from this poem. One being that to relive grief is horrible. It's not something people want to do. If Achilles was writing his own story, if he was retelling it, this is something that perhaps he intentionally left out. You know, we get the impression that when you are retelling your own history, you're of course not going to focus on the worst moments of your life. That personal, intimate, intense private grief belongs only to you. It doesn't belong to the world. And I find it really interesting that specifically here we are reminded that this is a history that's been written by someone else. It's a question that has been asked by someone else. And where Glück picks up the story as a sort of [00:21:00] retelling is again, to interrogate that idea of, well, what is the truth of this story? Where does the emotional core of this story lie? And the focus on a relationship is the most human thing. It's the most mortal thing. So I really love how she plays with this sense of privacy. the, intimate space of the tent, the intimacy of the armor, these very close confined spaces when actually so much of the history that we understand. And so many of the poems that we've read before are instead more outwardly focused.

It's such a beautiful way to kind of create contrast. I think fundamentally it's a really beautiful way to explore. is effectively a story of grief, that's the most universally human feeling. The, the sense of loss. losing someone that you love and being able to talk about their legacy is perhaps one of the most important stories. So I like that Glück is interrogating who gets to write history, but she's actually really asking what parts of history deserve to be written and why do we not focus on this softer, more emotional side, more so that that mirroring [00:22:00] between the, personal and the public, the private and intimate versus the outward and joyful and triumphant is just such a, clever relationship to toy with in this poem. I think.

JOE: 100%. And actually just while you were talking. I was thinking about that armor again in a slightly different way, thinking about that relationship between the private and the public, because that line, Patroclus resembled him. Semicolon. They wore the same armor that pause, and then they're telling us they wore the same armor.

Obviously, you know, it goes without saying you wear armor into battle. You're not gonna be wearing armor when you are feasting or in your tent necessarily. So that notion of resembling each other, I think what Glück is doing there is she's inviting the possibility. There don't actually look that alike at all.

But most people only know the side of Achilles because they see him in armor. They don't actually know what he looks like because there's thousands of soldiers. And Achilles is one man and it's very likely to be very far away from him. So you might recognize his armor or the plume on his helmet or whatever it is, but actually it's a reminder that the broad mass of a people who have an idea of this man don't know the [00:23:00] man at all.

It's actually a very select group that get to see him in his tent, in his more intimate moments. And yet the legend is decided by those who have a kind of passing relationship with him, those who might know him only by sight in a crowd. I mean, we could take this in a completely different context and we could, view this as a slight comment on the nature of modern celebrity and parasocial relationships, the way in which the public image of a person is often decided by people who have very little insight into that person's private life.

And I love the fact that Glück is hinting at that. And Maiya's absolutely right when she says that ultimately. One of the reasons this retelling is so successful, like other great mythic retellings, I mean, we talked to Michael Longley ceasefire in a recent episode, which takes a very similar moment from the early Adam Retells it, but focuses on what happens after the battle is over those intimate, quiet moments in the tent, stripping away the myth rather than reasserting it.

MAIYA: just as you were talking then, Joe, I realized that there was a line that had stood out to me when I was doing my research for this episode, and I, I wasn't quite sure what to [00:24:00] make of it, but you've really cemented this idea that is a huge difference between the personal and the public as it relates to your specific being, not just the spaces you occupy. . As Joe mentioned in the opening stanza, there's this line that that notes no one survives, not even Achilles, who was nearly a God. And as we get to the close of the poem, the final stanza states that Achilles grieved with his whole being and the God saw he was a man already dead. So this interplay between being not quite godlike and the fallibility of your mortality being the thing that breaks you ultimately in the end is such an important point when we talk about the relationship between personal and public here, because. What everyone sees. Evidently the legend of Achilles is Achilles, who was nearly a God. He was so close to being God-like in his armor, his courage that he brought to the battlefield. And yet where we are left at the end of this poem is the idea that he [00:25:00] grieved with his whole being the mortal and the immortal side. the version of Achilles that we see from the battlefield is not the complete version of him, but actually the whole being is the one that carries the grief and the triumph . so I think really what sits at the core of this poem is that relationship between individual suffering. And the external view of what triumph might look like. It's such a clever poem and we, could talk about this for three more episodes, I'm sure, but I'm conscious of time, so we should probably move on to our next poem

JOE: Absolutely. And as always, if you want to know more about the Triumph Achilles, you can read the article on poemanalysis.com, and I would really encourage you to look at the many, many Louise Glück poems we have analyzed on the site more than we can cover in today's episode, because she really is a remarkable poet.

Now for our next poem, we're gonna be jumping forward seven years in the career of Louise Glück because we're going to the title poem of her 1992 Collection The Wild Iris, which I will read some of now at the end of my suffering, there was a [00:26:00] door, hear me out, that which you call death.

I remember overhead noises. Branches of the pine shifting. They're nothing. The weak sun flickered over the dry surface. It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth. So before I throw to Maiya to break down some of what's going on in those lines, and there is so much going on in those lines, for anyone who's not aware from that reading or seems a little bit confused, effectively this poem is writing from the perspective of a personified flower that is breaking through the earth, to be reborn or to be born again from the seed of a previous iteration of the plant.

And that sense that this is a consistent consciousness from the former plant through the seed into this new sprouting is one of the things I'm really curious about here. And I would just like to remind listeners that even though this has got nothing to do with, you know, Greek mythology in the same way as the last poem, there are thematic similarities.

That relationship between something that is going to die and something that is not going to [00:27:00] die, that notion of whether or not this is the same flower. Or a different flower is not dissimilar to some of the themes that were being explored with regard to both Achilles' status as a demigod, but also the immortality of the story of Patroclus, who of course is not a demigod, never had any flirtation with divinity, and yet even then there is a hint of the immortal.

But Maiya, where would you like to look in those opening lines?

MAIYA: Oh, thanks. Thanks Joe. I think where I'd like to start with this poem is, that very first stanza and just for clarity for listeners, it's two lines, but it's actually an enjambed line, so it kind of runs on to the next, and I think it speaks a lot formally to what we're gonna talk about in this poem, which is that sense of continuity, that sense of flow. from a formal perspective, it's quite interesting to me that we start this poem without a defined ending, but of course. It is an ending that we're talking about. The first line states at the end of my suffering there was a door. So beginnings and endings are something that's already gonna be at play in this poem, and I think it's something that our listeners need to keep in mind as we progress through [00:28:00] the poem. What's really fascinating to me here is that sense of impermanence of this current state that the speaker is in. The speaker of this poem, as you rightly mentioned, is a personified flower, a wild iris. And this idea that the barrier between life and death is imagined as a door is really interesting to me. Of course, to us, the symbolism of a door is something that you can pass through both ways. You can go out of it, you can return into it. And I like the idea that here it's actually more of a one way journey at the end of my suffering, there was a door seems to suggest that there is an onward journey. So instead of representing something that is life in a more cyclical sense, it's something that you're going to repeat instead.

It's almost as if the life that we're talking about in this poem is a single stream of consciousness that's enduring multiple lives along the way. I think it's a really unique way to look at consciousness, and I find that her using and ending as a beginning only speaks more clearly [00:29:00] to that because. It pushes you through that door quite physically in the poem. you don't have the option to stay behind. You don't have the option to hold where you are. The poem quite literally pushes you through the door into the next stanza and then demands that you hear me out. And I love that this poem kind of takes command even though the voice of the poem is a little bit more abstract than something that we may be used to. But what do you think is there anything more in that opening line or would you like to move on to the second stanza?

JOE: No, I think I'd like to linger on that first line for just a moment longer or those first two lines I should say, because the door promises so much and yet reveals so little, because obviously as you mentioned, the door is a moment of transition, but it's also something that you can go back through.

It's not a one way street you can return, but it's also something that can be locked, something you can be denied entry to. And the ambiguity within those first two lines is so unsettling because we don't know whether or not this is a door that is open, whether it's a door that wants passed through, is going to be locked behind [00:30:00] us, whether it's a door that is shut to us, but we also don’t know at what stage of life we're in here because at the end of my suffering, well, to characterize a whole life as suffering is a rather strange and, again, troubling way to describe a life.

So is this just a rather depressing outlook on life is life. simply indistinguishable from suffering in the eyes of this voice. Or as the next line suggests, is this the voice of somebody who's already died? Because in the next lines, we are told that the thing you call death, I remember. So the voice has already died and remembers the act of dying, but unlike the way that most humans conceive of dying, meaning once you die, your body and consciousness end but that's very different I think, to the way that lots of people conceive of death, which is a point of finality. After you have died, you no longer remember the act of dying or indeed the act of being alive. Your consciousness dies with your mortal body. This poem is very different.

So is the suffering being referred to in the first line life or a period after death? Is it some kind of purgatory? Is it some kind of punishment? We don't know. [00:31:00] And the ambiguity is so. I said that word unsettling. You know, it is a very affecting poem to read because it promises so much and reveals so little.

And the ignorance that we enter the poem with and the lack of reassurance, I think the poem gives is a brilliant reminder of those uncertainties we all have about death. You know, whether or not you're a person of faith or an atheist or an agnostic or whatever, we all worry about dying and we all worry about what happens to our loved ones after they die.

And some of us seek comfort in religion, some of us don't. And those thoughts, feelings, preoccupations, are all contained within this poem. But I'm really curious about why Glück decided to take all those very, very human concerns and filter them through the voice of this flower. Why does she choose to embody an aspect of the natural world this way?

I mean, Maiya, I'd love to get your thoughts on that. 

MAIYA: Well, there's an ease to nature. I think as a kind of grander metaphor. As an extended metaphor across the poem, across the poetic canon as a whole. There is something enduring about nature, something that [00:32:00] humans don't quite have a grasp on or control of.

And I think this is where Glück's relationship with really plays in, because I think in modern literature, modern poetry, we definitely don't ascribe as much personality to the earth itself. Whereas in mythology, of course, we had dry ads, nymphs spirits of the earth that had personalities, had experiences, and , think the skill of this poem and, Glück's ability to. Kind of reimagine nature with a voice is something that lends itself to the reassurance that we gain as we move through this poem. By the end, though, we're not left with a certainty about what happens, we are left with a certainty that it will be okay. You know the, the closing lines of this poem are from the center of my life, came a great fountain, deep blue shadows on Azure water. So the beauty of this image is something that carries a lot of weight in this poem. I think it does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the feeling that we have [00:33:00] as we leave the poem. And I like that we have a more ambivalent voice in this poem because I think it allows the reader, the listener, to have more room to make their own mind up. I think usually when we kind of mediate on, on death, on grief in poems, I think with certain poems that, you know, you've even discussed on this podcast, there is a, a heaviness that accompanies poems specifically that, talk about death. I find that this poem in the sense that it is a little bit more abstract in the sense that it offloads the weight of human emotion onto nature and allows nature to be the bearer of that bad news. It creates a lightness in the poem that I think I found quite unexpected when I read it for the first time. And again, I think Glück's creation a voice that is so incredibly specific and yet also so. Aged get the impression that this voice has wisdom despite the fragility of what you imagine is a wild iris, a very small flower. There's a real sense of tension between the human [00:34:00] emotion that you expect to enter the poem with and the lightness that you leave it with.

And I really love that it's a little more subtle in that aspect,

JOE: Definitely. I mean, I mentioned earlier on that the opening of this poem can be quite unsettling, but upon reading it once and then twice it's quietly quite affirming. And I think this is something that runs through quite a lot of Glück's work is there is real trauma and suffering and unhappiness in quite a lot of the poems that she writes about.

You know, the last poem we were talking about was about the loss of your loved one. And these are deep, dark themes, and yet there is a quiet affirmation throughout lots of her poetry about the value of choosing to carry on in the face of these things. And that symbol of the door early on in the poem it at the end of the second line is a reminder that we have agency, we have choice and.

You know, Glück is so well versed in, Greek and in Roman mythology that, she must have known the kind of symbol she was playing with. And in Roman mythology, the God to Janus is the God of doorways, but also the God of choices. The idea that we all have [00:35:00] the option of going through the door, if we wish, or turning back and not going through it.

But also in this poem, which is ultimately about the act of being reborn, I think she could be playing with, the Greek myth related to the underworld, and particularly the paradise of the underworld, which was called Elysium. Souls had the choice in Elysium of being reborn and bearing in mind, Elysium is not dissimilar to the modern iteration of heaven.

Why would you choose to be reborn into the mortal world? Well, if a soul is reborn three times and reached Elysium in each of those, lifetimes, they would be taken to the Isle of the Blessed, which is kind of heaven plus, if you will. And it speaks to, I think. Uncertainty that lots of humans have about, well, what would I do?

You know, if you are given access to this kind of paradise , why would you choose to be reborn and to go through all the trials and tribulations of immortal life again? Well, Glück, I think, through this poem and the act of the flower being reborn, is reminding us that actually the decision to turn away from paradise and to live life as a mortal with all the pain, with all the suffering, with all the frailty that comes with that is actually a [00:36:00] more enriched life. It is a life worth living, perhaps more than just living in paradise forever. And this is a theme we see in one of her other great poems that I love, which is Odysseus's decision, which recasts a moment from the Odyssey in which Odysseus chooses to leave, Calypso's Island, where he's living as a, almost like a God.

But he chooses to go back into the mortal world, back into the fray with all the pain that that promises. Because ultimately, even though there is suffering, the suffering makes the joyous moments more worthwhile. And it's a very subtle form of affirmation throughout her poems, but it's something I really admire. She was someone, as Maiya mentioned at the top of the episode, that, you know, life wasn't always straightforward for Louise Glück. There were moments of loss, there were moments of suffering. There were moments where life must have felt really painful, but she never gives up on the experience of being human. And I find that a really touching quality in her work,

MAIYA: And you know what word I think does a majority of the work here for this poem is that word terrible. This idea that it is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth. Because in modern literature we [00:37:00] understand terrible to be something awful, something horrible. But it's also something awe inspiring when you look at older texts, terrible can also be substituted for something so great that inspires some sort of fear.

And I can absolutely see how that relates to this impression of human life as a whole. It is something terrible. It is something that brings you pain and suffering, but also joy at the cost of all of those things too. And I couldn't agree more. I think the human condition in Louise Glücks poetry, the impression of suffering, not as something that ought to be avoided, but as something that ought to be celebrated because it makes you more human, is just such a key through line in her work.

I think it's such an important message, I know on our podcast, we spend a lot of time analyzing poems and, and talking about what makes them formally great. But I think what makes poems great as a whole is their emotional charge. And it's something that, you know, we try our best to do in the podcast, but this is an example where you just can't [00:38:00] avoid it. And I, I would love to talk more about things like form and rhyme scheme and free verse and, and all of these. Sometimes it's worth just dwelling on the emotional charge because it carries so much of the purpose of the poem through.

Now for our final poem of this episode, I'd really like to talk about Vespers. Vespers is a poem that ties into kind of what we've been talking about today, really well, primarily because it uses the symbol of a tomato plant to explore loss and nurturing and failure. So I'll read a short section of it and then we can get into the, the meat of this poem but before I do, the context is a conversation between the speaker and a sort of unknown figure. We construe this to be a god-like figure or nature itself, , and the speaker is trying to grow tomatoes in her garden, but failing to do so, and she's pleading for some help or in many ways, critiquing the lack of support she has received for doing so.

And Joe, I'd love to know what you take from this poem as the core message, because I think it's quite veiled [00:39:00] in many ways. No, I'm not gonna read the opening of this poem, but I will read a few lines from the middle. as this poem is a free verse poem, so it's not structured in stanzas. All this belongs to you. On the other hand, I planted the seeds. I watched the first shoots like wings, tearing the soil, and it was my heart broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly multiplying in the rows. I doubt you have a heart in our understanding of that term, you who do not discriminate between the dead and the living. We can go so many directions with this poem. We can start with nature. We can start with the title. We can start with the significance of the tomato plant, but I would really like to begin with that title, vespers, as all of our regular listeners know, I cannot avoid a title, even if I want to. Vespers are effectively evening prayers. So the first question I want to ask our listeners is, why have we chosen to use the term Vespers, an evening prayer for something that is effectively a complaint, a complaint to nature, a complaint to God, A suggestion that [00:40:00] perhaps this omnipotent figure doesn't understand the sufferings and the losses of what it is to be human, to see something you've nurtured and grown fail. The Blight on this tomato plant is something that's been reflected in the speaker. This sense of disappointment, this sense of futility, and an evening prayer is very, very different to that. An evening prayer should be something that, focuses on forgiveness, understanding a merciful plea, perhaps to a, higher power. And I kind of went into a deep dive when I was doing my research for this episode on the symbolism of Vespers. So as I say, vespers are evening prayers, But the reason evening prayers are called vespers directly relate to Greek mythology.

There were two gods in Greek mythology called Hesperus and Phosphorus. Separately, they were seen as brothers. Sometimes they were seen as kind of two sides of the same coin. they represented the star Venus. So Phosphorus was the morning star and Hesperus was the evening star. Hesperus very often translates to Vesper as you'll be able to see from, you know, any written, written form of [00:41:00] it. Now, we've spoken a lot in this episode about mirroring, specifically when we were talking about The Triumph of Achilles, and it really spoke to me in this poem that we, again, have this relationship between two male figures, two brothers.

In this instance, obviously in triumph of Achilles, we had Achilles and Patroclus, and they represent two very differing states. So Phosphorus, also known as Lucifer in many ways was that morning star, something that brings hope and joy and radiance, but Hesperus being a representative of the evening brings darkness and moonlight. So there is a relationship between the two of them where perhaps the evening prayer Glück is suggesting carries a little bit more emotional resonance and little bit more weight. There is a discussion in this poem of destruction and fear and disappointment that I think couldn't be carried in the same way by a mourning prayer.

It couldn't be carried by something that is inevitably. Tied to hope. you know, of course we're talking about Venus as a star, but it does really represent a sort of [00:42:00] sun setting. Night arriving. There's a darkness that starts to weave its way through this poem. so using the title Vespers, which is both mythological and religious, immediately sets the scene for what this poem is not just going to be a simple hymn, it's not going to be necessarily something that is imbued with positivity. But what it does do is give that emotional resonance that you can really sink your teeth into. I mean, this idea, you know, the last line that I read you who do not discriminate between the dead and the living?

That's an accusation. It's accusational, it's it's confrontational, And it's asking the reader if this land is the dominion of an all powerful being. What is my place in it? What is my place when I'm the one who nurtured the soil?

I'm the one who witnessed the destruction. Again, it's this interplay between the very deeply personal and the public forums, I think Triumph of Achilles is a great reflection for this poem because it's a little bit more subtle in this poem.

It's a bit more personal. The speaker isn't a mythological figure. [00:43:00] However, you get this real impression that there's an interrogation through Glück's work of what it means to be truly human. And this poem is such a great example of that. I mean, the singularity of the experience, the tomato plant broken by blight is so easily applicable to the human condition. But Joe, I've gone on a bit of a deep dive there. I'd love to know your thoughts on this poem or if there's any other lines you'd like to focus on.

JOE: Well, regular listeners will know that I, I'm only encouraging of deep dives in whatever form they take, so thank you for that, Maiya. No, I think I'm so interested in, as you mentioned, Glück's as affirmation of the human condition, not because it's not as painful as we sometimes worry about, but precisely because it can be and that there is kind of beauty to be found in that suffering and those opening lines I just think are so.

Heavy in symbolism and in weight. In your extended absence. You permit me use of earth anticipating some return on investment. And this is quite a caustic opening to the poem. We imagine it to [00:44:00] be addressed to God or a God, and it's savage and its rejection and its accusatory tone as you mentioned.

So weighted with betrayal and a sense of abandonment. The idea that God has made the earth and then just run away and wants to come back years later and say, well, what have you done with it?

And in many ways, this poem therefore is a rejection of the divine, and yet it's a rejection of the divine that takes the form of a prayer. And I find that tension to be at the core of what she's doing because so much of, Glück's work is about saying life is so painful and it's so confusing and it's so difficult.

But whereas you might imagine the conclusion of someone who believes those things to be, therefore we should give it up and it's not worth anything. It's the exact opposite of that. Glück'spoemso often is about saying Life is so hard and we're so regularly disappointed by it, and isn't that what makes it worth continuing worth living, worth pursuing?

There's a real sense of animation that runs through the poem and her entire poetic canon. we're drawing to the end of this episode, but [00:45:00] you know, I would implore listeners to go and read more Louise Glück if they haven't already, because she's such a remarkable poet.

MAIYA: Remarkable is definitely the word. I would really encourage listeners as well, not to just take these poems, but to also make their own. You know, Vespers is a poem that can be read in so many different ways. One of the ways that I read this poem, of course, was, a, criticism of God, a criticism of nature, but it can also be read as a deeply, deeply feminine poem. Now there's a few lines that I'd like to point out in this poem that I personally think also could be related to a pregnancy loss. nature is so often used to describe kind of hormonal cycles, and there's a few elements of the language in this poem that have made me think this.

primarily using the motif of the tomato plants is this idea of going to seed. We have 12 weeks of summer. Now, for listeners who aren't aware, when you are pregnant, you are usually advised to wait at least 12 weeks before telling anyone, just in case the, pregnancy becomes inviable in that time. So again, you [00:46:00] have this suggestion that there is a waiting period, a nurturing period that you have to endure by yourself. In many ways, I think the speaker, testifies to this. Then as we get to the part of the poem that I read out earlier. The sense of loss that is carried here. The blight, the black spot, the symbolism of sort of miscarriage I think is really instrumental, particularly in how Glück deals with the way in which one singular event can kind of impact many other areas of your life.

She, notes that the black spot so quickly multiplies in the rows, and I find that the god-like figure here can be translated as the general public. It can also be translated perhaps as a partner that maybe doesn't understand. You have the spotted leaf and the red leaves of the maple falling even in early August.

The promise of summer and the promise of growth that's then being rejected by the very physical symptoms of what a miscarriage looks like for some people, which is the spotting of blood. so What I'd really like to impress on our listeners today is that there are so many ways you can take a poem., you can take this poem as one [00:47:00] that explicitly deals with, you know, a pregnancy loss. You can take this poem as an ecological one. You can take it as a rejection of religion. All of these things might be true at once. And, and we don't know. That's the, the joy of being able to discover a poem and how it speaks to you. and I think this is perhaps one of the reasons that Glück's poetry has really stood the test of time, and she has such a unique voice, as we said right at the start, is because she can speak to all of these things at once and any reader can take something from this poem that they personally understand, even though in many ways is very specific and unlike the feedback I received where I was told I was being too vague, this poem is not vague at all. It's incredibly specific. I can absolutely see why people call her post confessional because though this poem is intimately her voice, there is not a suggestion that she's replicating or kind of within the same league as the confessional poets that came before her.

This is so incredibly intimate to. The voice that she tries to curate. And I find that her ability to spread herself quite [00:48:00] thin across these, you know, various different topics and yet still manage to bear the emotional weight of each one equally is such talent.

JOE: That's such an interesting interpretation. Maiya, I, you know, one of the things I love doing on this podcast is hearing from you about these things that, you know, I might not have seen, even though I've read this poem, you know, so many times. And hopefully that's the experience that our listeners have as well.

And before we close out the episode, I'd just like to repeat what I said at the top, which is, thank you everyone. for the support over our 50 episodes, for the reviews, for the recommendations. And if anyone hasn't, liked reviewed, subscribed, you know, please let this be your opportunity to do so.

And also your opportunity, as you mentioned several times in this episode, to go and look at Louise Glück's, broader poetry because I think we've got nearly 60 of her poems analyzed on poemanalysis.com. There is so much there, but we can't talk about her forever, much as I'm sure we'd love to. So, Maiya, what are we gonna be talking about next week in our final episode of season four?

MAIYA: Well, firstly, I can't believe that we are four seasons down and a fifth one to come. I mean, I [00:49:00] know you've said it throughout this episode, but I'm so grateful for all of our listeners and anyone who's discovering us for the first time today. Can't wait for you to listen to our upcoming episodes. You know, this is something I know, Joe, when we first started this podcast, that we couldn't imagine having the listenership that we have now. You know, we have so many dedicated listeners who respond to us and tell us that they're enjoying the episodes.

I mean, please keep the good feedback coming. We love to hear it, but we also want to know what you want to hear. You know, we're doing this podcast because we love poetry, but we also want to respond to people. We wanna start that conversation. So if there's anyone you would like to hear on future episodes of Beyond the Verse, please do let us know via the community pages.

Drop onto poemanalysis.com and just drop us a message 'cause we cannot wait to talk about more and more poems. But for our 51st episode and our final one of season four. we will be talking about Alfred. Lord Tenon I, for one, cannot wait, but for now it's goodbye from me.

JOE: And goodbye for me and the whole team@poemanalysis.com and Poetry+. See you next [00:50:00] time.