Post by louisa on Nov 4, 2008 3:49:10 GMT 2
Presque Isle
by Louise Gluck
submitted by Ann Fisher-Wirth
When I first read "Presque Isle," one of the poems in Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris, I didn't know that Presque Isle is a place (in fact, a Google search tells me that there are many places called Presque Isle) and so I responded with an unmediated intensity to the literal meaning of the words: "Almost Island." This is a poem about memory, about the moment or two "in every life" that endure to haunt--or torment--thought and to incarnate all the beauty and tenderness of what has vanished. Such moments are an "almost-island." And since the whole book was written in one summer, during the breakup of the poet's marriage, this poem has a nearly unbearable poignancy.
Part of what gives this poem its power is Louise Gluck's astonishing tact, her gift of withholding. She writes, simply, "That small boy--he would be twenty now," and the intervening years suddenly open wide. But she says nothing about those intervening years, nothing about her present grief, nothing about the pain we all feel when confronted suddenly with so much loss and so much beauty. She simply returns us to the images: the damp hair streaked with auburn, the muslin and flicker of silver, the white peonies.
And through these images, the poem opens beyond the personal experience to become something deeper, both exhilarating and terrifying. The "pact" of which these images are "conditions" is between the two lovers, true, but it's also between all who exist and the unnamed God, creator of existence. The images are what's given, what grants us being. Toward the end of the poem, Gluck writes that the "square white room" is still there on Presque Isle, and we expect that she will say it hasn't "dissolved back into nothing," hasn't faded from "reality." But instead she writes that it hasn't "dissolved back into nothing, into reality" (italics mine). The "almost-island," then, is life itself, and it is surrounded by a sea, a darkness, an absolute groundswell that cannot be spoken or named.
Presque Isle
In every life, there's a moment or two.
In every life, a room somewhere, by the sea or in the mountains.
On the table, a dish of apricots. Pits in a white ashtray.
Like all images, these were the conditions of a pact:
on your cheek, tremor of sunlight,
my finger pressing your lips.
The walls blue-white; paint from the low bureau flaking a little.
That room must still exist, on the fourth floor,
with a small balcony overlooking the ocean.
A square white room, the top sheet pulled back over the edge of the bed.
It hasn't dissolved back into nothing, into reality.
Through the open window, sea air, smelling of iodine.
Early morning: a man calling a small boy back from the water.
That small boy--he would be twenty now.
Around your face, rushes of damp hair, streaked with auburn.
Muslin, flicker of silver. Heavy jar filled with white peonies.
Read more about the poet and more of her poems at:
www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=2578
www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/82
by Louise Gluck
submitted by Ann Fisher-Wirth
When I first read "Presque Isle," one of the poems in Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris, I didn't know that Presque Isle is a place (in fact, a Google search tells me that there are many places called Presque Isle) and so I responded with an unmediated intensity to the literal meaning of the words: "Almost Island." This is a poem about memory, about the moment or two "in every life" that endure to haunt--or torment--thought and to incarnate all the beauty and tenderness of what has vanished. Such moments are an "almost-island." And since the whole book was written in one summer, during the breakup of the poet's marriage, this poem has a nearly unbearable poignancy.
Part of what gives this poem its power is Louise Gluck's astonishing tact, her gift of withholding. She writes, simply, "That small boy--he would be twenty now," and the intervening years suddenly open wide. But she says nothing about those intervening years, nothing about her present grief, nothing about the pain we all feel when confronted suddenly with so much loss and so much beauty. She simply returns us to the images: the damp hair streaked with auburn, the muslin and flicker of silver, the white peonies.
And through these images, the poem opens beyond the personal experience to become something deeper, both exhilarating and terrifying. The "pact" of which these images are "conditions" is between the two lovers, true, but it's also between all who exist and the unnamed God, creator of existence. The images are what's given, what grants us being. Toward the end of the poem, Gluck writes that the "square white room" is still there on Presque Isle, and we expect that she will say it hasn't "dissolved back into nothing," hasn't faded from "reality." But instead she writes that it hasn't "dissolved back into nothing, into reality" (italics mine). The "almost-island," then, is life itself, and it is surrounded by a sea, a darkness, an absolute groundswell that cannot be spoken or named.
Presque Isle
In every life, there's a moment or two.
In every life, a room somewhere, by the sea or in the mountains.
On the table, a dish of apricots. Pits in a white ashtray.
Like all images, these were the conditions of a pact:
on your cheek, tremor of sunlight,
my finger pressing your lips.
The walls blue-white; paint from the low bureau flaking a little.
That room must still exist, on the fourth floor,
with a small balcony overlooking the ocean.
A square white room, the top sheet pulled back over the edge of the bed.
It hasn't dissolved back into nothing, into reality.
Through the open window, sea air, smelling of iodine.
Early morning: a man calling a small boy back from the water.
That small boy--he would be twenty now.
Around your face, rushes of damp hair, streaked with auburn.
Muslin, flicker of silver. Heavy jar filled with white peonies.
Read more about the poet and more of her poems at:
www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=2578
www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/82