Abstract

Abstract:

Nearly all of Louise Glück's readers have recognised an ascetic bearing in the formal spareness of her work. This essay traces three versions of ascesis expressed in her poetry: first, a practice of self-assertion through self-denial, involving a quest for independence, given forceful expression in Glück's early books; second, an art of seeing through illusion, or an art of reduction, an art that shapes in particular Averno and A Village Life; and third, a path to reawakened openness, involving a letting go at the heart of holding on, a path resonantly voiced in Glück's greatest book, The Wild Iris.

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