Glück, Louise - Charles Berger (essay date 1991)
Charles Berger (essay date 1991)
SOURCE: "Poetry Chronicle: Amy Clampitt, Louise Glück, Mark Strand," in Raritan: A Quarterly Review, Vol. X, No. 3, Winter, 1991, pp. 125-33.
[In the following review excerpt, Berger argues the success of Glück's use of the book-length sequence of short lyric poems in Ararat, and finds this approach a good alternative to traditional narrative structures. In addition, Berger favorably assesses Glück's "common language" in the volume.]
Louise Glück's Ararat is a book-length sequence of short lyrics set in the year following the death of the poet's father. Book-length is a phrase I usually recoil from when attached to lyric sequences, since it often serves as a plea for excusing local weaknesses. But Ararat truly is a volume of linked poems, a volume operating through laws of accrual where no single poem dominates others or—more remarkably—needs to be salvaged by the work as a...
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