Louise Glück Says a Poet Must Be Surprised by What the Mind Is

INTERNAL TAPESTRIES LOUISE GLÜCK SAYS A POET MUST BE SURPRISED BY WHAT THE MIND IS

CAPABLE OF UNVEILING, WHICH MAY EXPLAIN WHY HER TWELFTH BOOK OF POEMS,

FAITHFUL AND VIRTUOUS NIGHT, PUBLISHED THIS MONTH BY FARRAR, STRAUS

AND GIROUX, FEELS SO STARTLINGLY ALIVE WITH THE WONDER OF DISCOVERY.

N HIS essay “Meditations of a Sitter,” Louise dream—it’s more a stranger to normality than anything Glück’s onetime teacher Stanley Kunitz penned she’s ever written and ceaselessly thrilling in its tonal a line of such searing veracity it seems a con- effects. Thoreau believed that “truth strikes us from be- demnation of entire quadrants of the human hind, and in the dark,” but in Glück truth seems to strike tribe: “The empty ones are those who do not always from below, from beneath the half-lit undulations suffer their selfhood.” To suffer a selfhood of desire and dread. means to embody the soul of self, to Glück shares a birthday with Iknow yourself en route to becoming Immanuel Kant and is the author yourself. Glück studied with Kunitz of thirteen books of poems and a at Columbia University in the mid- fierce collection of essays. She is the sixties, and for nearly five decades Rosenkranz Writer-in-Residence at she has been the American poet Yale University, and for eight years most willing to communicate the served as judge for the Yale Series of flammable vicissitudes of selfhood, Younger Poets, a service of which she to detect the temblors beneath the remains immensely proud. As a poet self’s consistent adaptations to the she’s so decorated that if she were a facts of living. The facts of any life general you’d have to squint into the are impotent and ineffectual until glare of her: the Bollingen Prize for literature intercedes, until it takes hold of those facts Vita Nova (Ecco, 1999), the Pulitzer Prize for The Wild and twists them into the light, casting a refraction that Iris (Ecco, 1992), the National Book Critics Circle Award allows us to glimpse them anew. for The Triumph of Achilles (Ecco, 1985), the Wallace Ste- Glück’s refractions reveal the counterpoint between vens Award, the Lannan Literary Award—on and on. We fable and fact, between mythos and mundanity, between spoke for several hours one July afternoon at her home in the paralysis of silence and the necessity of assertion. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her immaculate apartment Her new book of poems, Faithful and Virtuous Night, is adorned with artwork by the poet Mark Strand, and published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, be- out back breathes her beloved garden, transplanted here trays an intimate surrealism, a congress of parable and from Vermont thirteen years ago.

BY WILLIAM GIRALDI • PHOTOGRAPHS BY WEBB CHAPPELL

SEPT OCT 2014 42 INTERNAL TAPESTRIES conversation LOUISE GLÜ CK

What’s remarkable about the ar- the narrative tendons connecting chitecture of Faithful and Virtuous muscle to bone. I cannot conceive Night is that one can land anywhere of this book without them. inside this book and find a poem that I can’t either. It was my friend Kath- is both self-fulfilled, unconcerned ryn Davis who prompted me toward with what precedes or follows, them. She’d read every poem as it was and also a component in the larger written, and during one of my many whole that informs the unfurling stages of hopelessness she said, “I think narrative. You’ve erected similar you should be reading Kafka’s short scaffolding in the past—in all of fiction.” I’d read Kafka’s short fic- your books since the 2007 collection before but thought I’d try again, tion, Ararat, the poems coalesce and and although I didn’t love it this time function as a single movement—but around, that was useful to me, because in its intricacy and dynamism the I didn’t feel daunted by him. I read the architecture of this new book seems short-shorts—“The Wish to Be a Red to me entirely different. Indian” and others—in bed, where all It seems to me different too. There my mental activity now occurs. My were years when I thought I’d never re- bed usually looks like Proust’s bed; solve the issue of this structure, never my whole life is lived there. I got my be able to give a shape to these poems, notebook—which I keep around usu- which usually means there’s a piece ally for other purposes, because if missing, as was true here. I had first I let myself think that I might write thought that the long monologue— something I become so paralyzed with which is now divided, interspersed longing and despair I can hardly bear with these surreal, fragmented narra- it—and I wrote a little prose poem. It tives and prose poems—I had thought was, I thought, terrible, not even worth that the long poem would be a whole typing. But I was having dinner with that moved roughly chronologically Frank Bidart that night—I’m will- from section to section, but it seemed ing to be humiliated in the presence lifeless when I put it together that way. of my friends—and so before I threw I tried rearranging the sequence but away the prose poem, I thought I’d see that wasn’t the answer. At some point, what Frank thought. And Frank, as fiddling with order, I put the title you know, can be a tough critic. He poem next to “An Adventure.” That told me I mustn’t throw it out, and juxtaposition suggested the shape this after that I wrote a little squadron of book wanted. But that shape didn’t re- them. The book was then very easy to ally find itself until the end—when I put together. I’d been trying for two wrote prose poems, which I’d never years, but I didn’t have that last mode. done before—they were written in a It didn’t need another large thing, tide of exhilaration at the thought that another tone, but it needed another maybe I could finally finish this book. mode, another facet to the prism, another method by which to examine Those prose poems are ligatures these same materials. that allow the whole to cohere with such startling poise. They recall What a bolt of insight for Kath- the way Hemingway’s vignettes ryn Davis to recommend that you function in his story collections, go back to Kafka. The frequent playfulness and stabs of comedy in your work are too little noticed, and WILLIAM GIRALDI is the author of the the same is true for Kafka: Many novels Hold the Dark, published this month readers don’t notice how funny by Norton, and Busy Monsters (Norton, he can be. I’m delighted by your 2011). He is the fiction editor for the dedication to great prose writers. journal AGNI at Boston University. The poetic persona in “A Summer

SEPT OCT 2014 44 conversation LOUISE GLÜ CK

Garden” is reading Mann’s Death in trying to put a poem or a book together, what I’m tracking, only the conviction Venice. Do you see a novelist’s sense I feel like a tracker in the forest follow- that I’ll know it when I see it. of narrative as different from your ing a scent, tracking only step to step. own? It’s not as though I have plot elements The novelist enjoys a clear advan- Yes, I think prose writers work with grafted onto the walls elaborating tage over the poet who employs narrative very differently. When I’m themselves. Of course, I have no idea narrative: The novelist has charac- ters who need something, and they POEM have either to achieve their needs or not achieve them. The plot is the A Summer Garden pursuit of those needs. The poet 4. doesn’t necessarily have that. I like Mother died last night, your image of stalking through the Mother who never dies. wood, unsure where it ends. The novelist had better see to the end Winter was in the air, of that wood. Not that there can’t many months away be surprises in what is found there, but in the air nevertheless. but better at least to glimpse it in advance. It was the tenth of May. I depend on that ignorance, on not see- Hyacinth and apple blossom ing to the end of the book, because if bloomed in the back garden. I have an idea, initially it’s likely to be the wrong idea. I mean my ideas come We could hear later, after the fact. Ideas are not a part Maria singing songs from Czechoslovakia— of how I conceive of a book.

How alone I am— Reading you, and especially these songs of that kind. new poems, I’m often in mind of a quip by the English critic Desmond How alone I am, MacCarthy: “It is the business of no mother, no father— literature to turn facts into ideas.” my brain seems so empty without them. It’s pretty, but I don’t know if that’s what I think. I don’t like that trinity of Aromas drifted out of the earth; words: business, facts, ideas. I don’t think the dishes were in the sink, literature exactly has a business, and rinsed but not stacked. the minute someone says to me what the business is, I immediately want to Under the full moon prove that that’s too limited a notion. Maria was folding the washing; For instance, I want to substitute tone the stiff sheets became for fact. If you can get right the tone, dry white rectangles of moonlight. it will be dense with ideas; you don’t initially know fully what they are, but How alone I am, but in music you want by the end to know fully what my desolation is my rejoicing. they are or you won’t have made an exciting work. For me it’s tone—the way It was the tenth of May the mind moves as it performs its acts as it had been the ninth, the eighth. of meditation. That’s what you’re fol- lowing. It guides you but it also mysti- Mother slept in her bed, fies you because you can’t turn it into her arms outstretched, her head conscious principles or say precisely balanced between them. what its attributes are. The minute you turn tone into conscious principle From “A Summer Garden” from Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück, published in it goes dead. It has to remain mysteri- September 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2014 by Louise Glück. ous to you. You have to be surprised by All rights reserved. what it is capable of unveiling. As you

45 POETS & WRITERS conversation LOUISE GLÜ CK work on a book of poems you begin to shapeless, dreamy seeking by absorb- understand what is at issue, but I don’t ing the conscious mind in a compelling have any attitude toward the facts. quest. One of the advantages of aging And if MacCarthy’s terms are correct, is that you know you’ve read a book, I would prefer the notion that a poet or believe you’ve read a book, but you turns ideas and abstractions into facts, don’t really remember it. You remem- rather than the other way around. ber only that you love it. And some- where near the middle you realize All through your work, certainly that you actually do remember all of from Ararat on, much of that the details of the plot. It’s immensely rhythm happens by the repetition of pleasing to read something you have simple terms. In this new book the confidence in, something that won’t same terms appear again and again: disappoint you. The only disappoint- silence, winter, mother, father, night. ment might be that you’re missing the The overlap of personae works the thrill of uncovering the killer, but it’s same way, when the poet’s perspec- a small disappointment if you love the tive repeatedly intrudes upon and world that’s being constructed. augments the perspective of the larger narrative. In that regard Wilkie Collins is Yes, there’s that overlap, as you say, be- unmatched—one can read his best cause over and over there are the same novels every few years with identical materials, though to my ear they’re pleasure. He’s better than Dickens passing through a very different lens. in the construction of a thrilling, More interesting to me than the re- alternate world that dictates its own peating words (which seem fairly ordi- stipulations. Do you remember The nary) are the repeated images. When I Woman in White? put the book together, I was astounded And The Moonstone, yes. I read those by the internal tapestries. I hadn’t con- books first in my adolescence and a few sciously built in those recurrences or times since then. I bought The Moon- echoing gestures and vignettes, but stone again when I felt I had exhausted there they were—there was the train, all available murder fiction, and I had and the train again, and the train was trouble getting into it. Maybe I’ll try a character. Averno I thought of the again. I certainly need something to same way, actually. It’s not a shaped give competition to the iPad. I seem to narrative arc the way some of the oth- be in an iPad period. I don’t read on it. ers are, but it’s a meditation on a set I just watch things that move. of conditions and dilemmas, so all the poems revolve around certain repeat- Your legion of devotees might be ing images, such as the burned field, startled to hear about your iPad. which is right out of Henning Mankell. I was startled myself. I never had the In- Averno was my homage to Mankell. I ternet until last year. This is all brand- tried to use something from one of his new for me. The iPad was given to me books in every one of the poems. No- at a reading. I told the person: “Don’t body noticed it, which is good, but it give this to me. I will never turn it on.” was there for me. But the person shoved it at me, so then I had it, and I felt sort of responsible to In her book Why I Read: The Seri- it. So I sat with it for about six months. ous Pleasure of Books, your friend And then one day I began poking at it. Wendy Lesser speaks about your I knew people poked at it. But nothing abiding love of murder mysteries happened, and I thought: “Well, I just and of Mankell in particular. don’t have the gift.” Then I realized I Mankell makes me happy. Murder needed some sort of hookup. That took mysteries are a way of releasing the another six months. By this time my unconscious mind to speculative, niece was in a television show, Orange

SEPT OCT 2014 46 conversation LOUISE GLÜ CK

Southwest Review 2014 Morton

First Place Marr $1,000 Poetry Prize First Place – $1,000 Second First Place – $1,000 Place – $500 Second Place – $500

Publication in Southwest Review accompanies both prizes. • Open to writers who have not yet published a book of poetry. • Contestants may submit no more than six, previously unpublished, poems in a “traditional” form (e.g., sonnet, sestina, villanelle, rhymed stanzas, blank verse, et al.). • Poems should be printed blank with name and address information only on a cover sheet or letter. • $5.00 per poem entry/ handling fee. • Postmarked deadline for entry is September 30, 2014. • Submissions will not be re- turned. All entrants will receive Is the New Black, which was available that if my vocation is so fragile or pre- a copy of the issue in which only through streaming. It turned out, carious it isn’t a vocation. After all, there the winning poems appear. on this little device, you just press some- were two years when I read nothing but • Mail entry to: thing and there they all were. And it garden catalogues, and that turned out The Morton Marr Poetry Prize became my bed buddy. It’s really the okay—it became a book. Southwest Review freakiest thing because I became an P.O. Box 750374 addict very fast. At the moment it has You mean The Wild Iris. I’m certain Dallas, TX 75275-0374 usurped the place of reading in my life. you’re the only American poet who’s Part of me thinks this is dangerous; my won the Pulitzer after two years of g Visit us at own vocation will dissolve. Another reading nothing but garden cata- www.smu.edu/southwestreview part of me thinks this is exploratory, logues.

47 POETS & WRITERS conversation LOUISE GLÜ CK

Well, there’s something my brain “I used to be approached needs in such indulging, so I indulge it. This iPad addiction seems to me in classes by women who felt endlessly curious. Something may come of it. I’m an opportunist—I al- they shouldn’t have children ways hope I’ll get material out of any activity. I never know where writing is because children were too going to come from; it isn’t as though I have something in mind and this iPad distracting, or would eat up is the source. This is just dream time, the way detective fiction is. It stills a the vital energies from which certain kind of anxiety and at the same time engages the mind. As the mind is art comes. But you have to live engaged and anxiety suppressed, some imaginative work in some recessed your life if you’re going to do portion of the being is getting done. Not to say that every moment is con- original work.” tributing to a book or a poem, but you can’t know in advance what will. Don’t prejudge your stimuli. Just trust where The catalyst for Faithful and Virtu- your attention goes. ous Night was your agon with not writing, with wordlessness. You once said to me on the phone, Yes, I was moaning to my sister about “Follow your enthusiasms.” losing words, about the deterioration I believe that. I used to be approached of my vocabulary. I said to her, “How in classes by women who felt they am I ever going to write when I’m los- shouldn’t have children because chil- ing words?” and she said, “You’ll write dren were too distracting, or would about losing words.” And I thought, eat up the vital energies from which “Wow, good, I’ll write about having no art comes. But you have to live your speech, about deterioration.” Then it life if you’re going to do original was the most exciting thing, a wealth work. Your work will come out of an of material—everything I had been be- authentic life, and if you suppress all moaning was actually unexplored terri- of your most passionate impulses in tory. That was the catalyst, as you say, the service of an art that has not yet for the whole endeavor—a liberating, a declared itself, you’re making a terrible permission. The idea of writing about mistake. When I was young I led the not writing seemed promising because life I thought writers were supposed to I knew a lot about those not-writing lead, in which you repudiate the world, states, but they were not something I’d ostentatiously consecrating all of your ever written about. One of the experi- energies to the task of making art. I ences of putting together my large book just sat in Provincetown at a desk and of extant poems was an astonishment it was ghastly—the more I sat there because my sense of my life, now fairly not writing the more I thought that I long, is that almost all the time I’m not just hadn’t given up the world enough. writing. I was flabbergasted putting After two years of that, I came to the together that large book, nearly seven conclusion that I wasn’t going to be hundred pages. And I thought: “How a writer. So I took a teaching job in can that have happened? When did I Vermont, though I had spent my life write all that?” My feeling concerning till that point thinking that real poets my life is that always I was not working. don’t teach. But I took this job, and the Well, apparently I was. minute I started teaching—the minute I had obligations in the world—I The gestures of silence lurk ev- started to write again. erywhere in Faithful and Virtuous

SEPT OCT 2014 48 conversation LOUISE GLÜ CK

Night, as they do in your work as taking objection to some of the things a whole, but is your conception of being said. It’s not a book in which your own silence a kind of illusion? large bannerlike truths are being un- A seven-hundred-page collection of folded. poems is not silence. No, it’s real, not an illusion at all. I There’s a disciplined seething de- go through two, three years writing tectable just beneath the surface of nothing. Zero. Not a sentence. Not these new poems, a fervency of feel- bad poems I discard, not notes toward ing we know is there just as we know poems. Nothing. And you don’t know distant planets are there—not be- in those periods that the silence will cause we can see them but because end, that you will ever recover speech. they cause a bending, a wobble in It’s pretty much hell, and the fact that the light of their stars. In these new it’s always ended before doesn’t mean poems, the tone, the pitch is bent to that any current silence isn’t the termi- reveal the seething beneath it. The nal silence beyond which you will not book has such a patient turbulence. move, though you will live many years That’s nice, a patient turbulence. It’s in your incapacity. Each time it feels there as a background but the whole that way. When I’m not writing, all the book seems to me to be about mov- old work becomes a reprimand: Look ing beyond that turbulence, or that what you could do once, you pathetic slug. seething, as you say, and into this un- common zone where you’re on a horse I recall those lines from “Approach flying through the air. How did that of the Horizon”: “It is the gift of happen? What’s distinctive in this expression / that has so often failed book is that sense of dreaminess. But me. / Failed me, tormented me, vir- there are two parallel issues regarding tually all my life.” silence: one is the silence that is the Do you know Iris Murdoch? faltering of a gift or a need for expression, and there’s also silence that is the She’s superb. I love the humor in result of deterioration, a faltering in Under the Net. the being that is a product of age. Al- I’d been rereading all of Murdoch though I’ve been writing about death before I began this new book. I often my whole life, deterioration or the reread a writer—read one book and weakening of the powers is brand-new then want to enter that world more to me. The subject is gloomy, I sup- fully. In any case, I can hear Murdoch pose, but new material is exhilarating. in those lines you just recited. I love The quality I feel most intensely in this The Black Prince, A Severed Head, The book is a quality of euphoria, a floating, Green Knight, even strange things a whimsy. It’s an undertaking of a large such as A Word Child. There’s some- adventure, which is the adventure of thing in her archness, not a tone I’d decline. It seems an oxymoron, I know, normally think to emulate, but there’s and will come to seem a gloomy fate, something delicious in it. Her people but now—as long as it produces some- might be murdering and raping but thing of which you’re proud, you’re really they’re thinking about what grateful for it, delighted by it. goodness is in the world, bizarre jux- tapositions of that kind. Something of You said once that the life of a poet her got transferred to this new book. oscillates between ecstasy and It’s a matter of tone. The interest of agony, and what mitigates those ex- the poems is in the tone in which large tremes is the necessary daily busi- pronouncements are made, not neces- ness of living. sarily the pronouncements themselves. Yes. Friends, conversation, gardens. The pronouncements are constantly Daily life. It’s what we have. I believe being scrutinized by the tone, which is in the world. I trust it to provide me.

49 POETS & WRITERS