no one could write a novel about this family: too many similar characters

i think we should discuss louise glück. brace yourself.

Lost Love

My sister spent a whole life in the earth.

She was born, she died.

In between,

not one alert look, not one sentence.

She did what babies do,

she cried. But she didn't want to be fed.

Still, my mother held her, trying to change

first fate, then history.

Something did change: when my sister died,

my mother's heart became

very cold, very rigid,

like a tiny pendant of iron.

Then it seemed to me my sister's body

was a magnet. I could feel it draw

my mother's heart into the earth,

so it would grow.

there are a couple reasons that i like louise. FIRST: she's a sarah lawrence girl. rad. second of all, the voice is incredibly straightforward. so straightforward that it is, in fact, alarming. and lord knows i love to be alarmed. i enjoy her darkness the way i enjoy todd solondz movies. the detachment of this voice is so... accurate? it characterizes so much that is beyond the poem. do i hear pity? and what about the end, where the mother's heart is drawn under ground, away from her still living child, and it flourishes. what of that?

last night i remembered how to write poetry after having not done it for a while. i remembered that before anything goes down on the page, there must be emotion attached to it. but then i look at this poem. and where is her emotion on the page? it's like she's not even there. and yet i'm reacting. but is my reaction emotional? not really. i would characterize it as voyeuristic. the poem is displayed through a very very very very filtered lense. she's bold. the writing reflects the physical nature of the mother's heart, "cold and rigid," not to mention the rigidness that we would associate with you know, dead babies.

this poem is a good example of what you can expect from glück. these particular poems are from her book, ararat, which if you're in the market for poetry, i really recommend owning, so that can submerge in it and live life from under the water.

one more!

Brown Circle

My mother wants to know

why, if I hate

family so much,

I went ahead and

had one. I don't

answer my mother.

What I hated

was being a child,

having no choice about

what people I loved.

I don't love my son

the way I meant to love him.

I thought I'd be

the lover of orchids who finds

red trillium growing

in the pine shade, and doesn't

touch it, doesn't need

to possess it. What I am

is the scientist,

who comes to that flower

with a magnifying glass

and doesn't leave, though

the sun burns a brown

circle of grass around

the flower. Which is

more or less the way

my mother loved me.

I must learn

to forgive my mother,

now that I'm helpless

to spare my son.