UnCovered review by
Marina Smolens, ACLS Brigantine Branch
To celebrate National
Poetry Month, I decided it necessary to revisit a favorite of mine: Louise
Glück. Glück is one of America’s greatest contemporary poets. She won the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 2020 and held the position of U.S. Poet Laureate from
2003 to 2004.
What first made me fall
in love with Glück was her collection titled THE WILD IRIS – a collection that combines the reverence of
nature with the existentialism of humans. She is known for “her
unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence
universal.
MEADOWLANDS, the next book in her body of work published
five years after THE WILD IRIS,
certainly holds true to this statement. She utilized a retelling of the Odyssey to
explore the breakdown of a marriage. It shows the true power of storytelling;
how the ancient can be projected onto the modern, and how there is still so
much there for us in today’s world that lies within these old stories. Myths
uncover people’s truths, and Glück has harnessed their power in a contemporary
rendering to help establish the universality in her work, gaining her favor in
many of our hearts and on many of our shelves. Be sure to check them out from
one of ours!
