A Disappointing Life (For Class)

A Disappointing Life

The book A Village Life, by Louise Gluk, is about just that, life in a small village. This village, while centered around agricultural pursuits, such as harvest and market, is also centered around something a bit more sinister; oppression.  This village has been left alone by the modern-day technology of ipods and netflix, but has never really been released from the oppression of out-of-date values and beliefs.  Oppression is also present in the monotony of the villagers’ lives; the repetitive cycle of a life planned by tradition. Oppression lurks in the judgmental eyes of watchful neighbors.  This feeling of oppression seem to breed suspicion, guilt, and anxiety in each piece, from the poem about a woman contemplating her failed marriage, to the poem about someone simply trying to enjoy a tomato.  No subject is left out between these two extremes. 

            Glück establishes this feeling of oppression in her book by using both form and voice.  Though her poems are essentially free verse, using no rhyme scheme or meter, they do not sound uninhibited.  Instead of flowing gently from line to line, guided by lovely adjectives and gentle action, Glück’s words come out matter-of-factly, if not curt. Her verse appears anything but free.  Each poem sounds as if the author was being called down to dinner by an impatient mother, a mother who probably does not approve of poetry.  Interestingly enough, this tone only adds to her work, emphasizing the poems’ feelings of anxiety and guilt.  For example, in the poem, “Primavera,” Glück uses three short lines to describe spring:

“Spring comes quickly: overnight

the plum tree blossoms,

the warm air fills with bird calls.”[1]

The stanza is not verbose, yet effectively creates a beautiful image.  In fact, most of her poems are in the form of monologues and narratives, two styles that make the poetry seem as if the reader is thinking it instead of reading it.  Though each poem contains a sparse amount of adjectives, they all seem to contain more than an average amount of verbs.  However, this does not mean that the lines are not descriptive.  In fact, the verbs seem to paint a more vivid picture in a few words than 10 adjectives ever could.  It seems as if every line contains an action that builds a setting or a feeling quickly and effectively.  Because of this, Glück’s poems do not need to be long or verbose to get their feelings across to an audience and most feelings are established in a single short stanza. For example, in the poem, “A Slip of Paper,” the speaker does not beat around the bush in communicating the mood of the poem:

“Today I went to the doctor-

the doctor said I was dying,

not in those words, but when I said it,

she didn’t deny it-“[2]

In those four lines, written as if they were mortality statistics, Glück establishes a mood of quiet despair and sad acceptance.  This minimalistic style prevails throughout the book and fits nicely with the theme of a simple village life.

The book starts out pastoral enough, with a poem called, “Twilight,” in which the speaker contemplates a man coming home from working in a mill, to sit at a window and watch the only part of the day he ever gets to see be slowly taken away from him by the setting sun.  The speaker alludes to the man’s guilt caused by this small pleasure, by quoting something the man heard long ago as he sits by his window; “living- living takes you away from sitting.”[3]  The man, though he enjoys seeing twilight, knows that it is a waste of time, sitting and desiring something that cannot stay.  He feels anxious watching the sun set, knowing that soon he must, like every other night, “let everything go,”[4] and go to sleep.  This poem, though beautifully written in my opinion, is also devastatingly sad.  To think that a man who works all day cannot enjoy something so simple as twilight without feeling depression or guilt, is a horrible thought.  This poem introduces the village as a place controlled too tightly by some values, such as hard work, and too little influenced by other beliefs, like the idea that beauty should be enjoyed.  In other words, this poem sets a tone for the rest of the book, warning its readers that though A Village Life may be stunningly beautiful, it cannot be appreciated without sadness. 

Though oppression plays a large role in this book, it is not the only theme.  Another main theme present in A Village Life is a love of the past.  Most of the poems are reminiscences, comparing the ways things are to the way things once were.  In the poem, “Tributaries,” the speaker discusses her journey through life, starting at the center of everything and, by age or centrifugal force, being pushed to the edge.  She describes a fountain in the middle of a village square.  In the fountain, children play, occupying the center of attention.  Young couples sit on the edge of the fountain, “splashing their sweethearts with fountain water,”[5] while mothers watch their children and “talk to one another, maybe meet a young man, see if there’s anything left of their beauty.  When they look down, it’s a sad moment; the water isn’t encouraging.”[6]  These women are dreaming about their youth and can get away with it, until, of course, they see their own reflection. Around the fountain are metal tables, the seats taken by the elderly.  Though they have spun out to the edge of life, they do not yearn for their youth.  Instead, they watch the others, fascinated.

“The mothers are tired constantly, the children are always fighting,

the husbands at work or angry.  No young man comes.

The couples are like an image from some faraway time, an echo coming

very faint from the mountains.”[7] 

This poem reeks of the oppressing values present in the village.  It is assumed that the husbands are either constantly working or in a constant state of anger.  The young couples are “like an image from some faraway time,” suggesting that they appear like characters in a fairy tale.  One can assume that this means they are not being particularly showy with their feelings, meaning they are oppressed by embarrassment and guilt.  Another poem, “At the River,” delves further into this embarrassment.  “At the River” is a poem about the speaker’s mother explaining sexual intercourse to her daughter.  The poem begins with the speaker saying her mother wanted to tell her about “pleasure.”  But daughter soon understands that, to her mother, sex and pleasure are certainly not the same thing. The mother is embarrassed by the whole ordeal and takes her daughters hand “as though somebody in the family had just died.”[8]  She tries to explain it unemotionally, but ends up making herself sound like a “speech about mechanical engineering than a conversation about pleasure.”[9]  The poem delves deeper into the mother and why she cannot seem to explain sex well.  The speaker offers an explanation by saying; “she and my father did not have a language for what they did which, from what I could judge, wasn’t pleasure.”[10]  This is obviously a society that cannot feel comfortable with sexuality in any form.  This is just further evidence that the village is oppressed by outdated beliefs and social constraints.

Another poem that epitomizes the feeling of oppression in the village is “Harvest.” Though the oppression in this poem does not appear as blatantly as it does in the other poems, it is able to pick up through the anxiety and guilt expressed in word choice.  The poem begins with a discussion about tomatoes:

“It’s autumn in the market-

Not wise anymore to buy tomatoes”[11]

The beginning is innocent enough, but the poem then seems to take a turn for the sinister:

“They’re beautiful still on the outside,

Some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties

Misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oil cloth-“[12]

The idea of tomatoes as human brains is quite a terrifying image.  Sadly, it only gets worse from there.

“Inside, they’re gone.  Black, moldy-

you can’t take a bit without anxiety.”[13]

The speaker cannot even observe tomatoes at a market without imagining the worst.  This demonstrates the theme of suspicion and anxiety that runs throughout many of the poems. 

The book A Village Life is rife with strife!  Though its poems are beautiful, emotional works of art, they leak sad feeling all over a reader’s desk.  Every poem is created to express grief, oppression, heartbreak, and disappointment through its form, voice, and word choice.  There is not one poem in this entire book that is actually happy.  Of course, that is not surprising.  It is hard to find a revered piece of contemporary poetry that speaks only of happiness or contentment.  Of course, there are some poems in this book that speak of enjoyable tasks.  However, these tasks are discussed in comparison to other painful, depressing topics.  A Village Life may seem lovely, but the village itself is an oppressed community, unable to take joy in life. 

---

[1] Louise Glück. A Village Life. page 46 New York: Farrar, Straus, And Giroux, 2009. Print.

[2] Ibid., 32

[3] Ibid., 3

[4] Ibid., 3

[5] Ibid., 6

[6] Ibid., 6

[7] Ibid., 6

[8] Ibid., 21

[9] Ibid., 21

[10] Ibid., 21

[11] Ibid., 41

[12] Ibid., 41

[13] Ibid., 41

Bibliography:

Glück, Louise. A Village Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, And Giroux, 2009. Print.

A Disappointing Life (Not for Class)

I had a reason for choosing Louise Gluck as the poet I would like to study.  It may not be a good reason, but it was a reason nonetheless.  When I first began searching for poets, thumbing through my book, I was, what you called, “windsurfing,” breezily skimming the surface of many different authors’ work; reading close enough to feel the rhythm of a poem, but not so close that I was delving into its symbolism or meaning for more than thirty seconds.  This system was working fine.  Then I came upon Louise’s work.  All of a sudden I found myself scuba diving.  When reading her work, I couldn’t help but plunge into the depth of feeling, voice and rhythm embedded in her seemingly simple, yet extraordinarily emotional work.  Before I knew it, fifteen minutes had past, and I was still reading and rereading just one of her poems.  I knew I had to analyze her work. 

I am reviewing A Village Life by Louise Gluck.  I read A Village Life from cover to cover and was
 generally a fan.  There were some poems that I thought were more profound or perhaps more striking
 than others, but I was sure that was just a matter of taste.  Upon sitting down to write this assignment, 
 I was forced to think about the main themes of the book itself.  That is when it struck me.  I had 
 absolutely no idea what the main themes were.  Sure, I had written down a few thoughts in my poetry 
 notebook, (“growing up, sadness, burning leaves, fountain,”) but nothing really seemed to tie together.   It took me a few minutes of staring contemplatively into the book’s cover to actually realize what all the poems had in common. 

The book A Village Life, by Louise Gluk, is about just that, life in a small village. This village, while centered around agricultural pursuits, such as harvest and market, is also centered around something a bit more sinister; oppression.  This village has been left alone by the modern-day technology of ipods and netflix, but has never really been released from the oppression of out-of-date values and beliefs.  Oppression is also present in the monotony of the villagers’ lives; the repetitive cycle of a life planned by tradition. Oppression lurks in the judgmental eyes of watchful neighbors.  This feeling of oppression seem to breed suspicion, guilt, and anxiety in each piece, from the poem about a woman contemplating her failed marriage, to the poem about someone simply trying to enjoy a tomato.  No subject is left out between these two extremes. 

            Glück establishes this feeling of oppression in her book by using both form and voice.  Though her poems are essentially free verse, using no rhyme scheme or meter, they do not sound uninhibited.  Instead of flowing gently from line to line, guided by lovely adjectives and gentle action, Glück’s words come out matter-of-factly, if not curt. Her verse appears anything but free.  Each poem sounds as if the author was being called down to dinner by an impatient mother, a mother who probably does not approve of poetry.  Interestingly enough, this tone only adds to her work, emphasizing the poems’ feelings of anxiety and guilt.  For example, in the poem, “Primavera,” Glück uses three short lines to describe spring:

“Spring comes quickly: overnight

the plum tree blossoms,

the warm air fills with bird calls.”[1]

The stanza is not verbose, yet effectively creates a beautiful image.  In fact, most of her poems are in the form of monologues and narratives, two styles that make the poetry seem as if the reader is thinking it instead of reading it.  Though each poem contains a sparse amount of adjectives, they all seem to contain more than an average amount of verbs.  However, this does not mean that the lines are not descriptive.  In fact, the verbs seem to paint a more vivid picture in a few words than 10 adjectives ever could.  It seems as if every line contains an action that builds a setting or a feeling quickly and effectively.  Because of this, Glück’s poems do not need to be long or verbose to get their feelings across to an audience and most feelings are established in a single short stanza. For example, in the poem, “A Slip of Paper,” the speaker does not beat around the bush in communicating the mood of the poem:

“Today I went to the doctor-

the doctor said I was dying,

not in those words, but when I said it,

she didn’t deny it-“[2]

In those four lines, written as if they were mortality statistics, Glück establishes a mood of quiet despair and sad acceptance.  This minimalistic style prevails throughout the book and fits nicely with the theme of a simple village life.

The book starts out pastoral enough, with a poem called, “Twilight,” in which the speaker contemplates a man coming home from working in a mill, to sit at a window and watch the only part of the day he ever gets to see be slowly taken away from him by the setting sun.  The speaker alludes to the man’s guilt caused by this small pleasure, by quoting something the man heard long ago as he sits by his window; “living- living takes you away from sitting.”[3]  The man, though he enjoys seeing twilight, knows that it is a waste of time, sitting and desiring something that cannot stay.  He feels anxious watching the sun set, knowing that soon he must, like every other night, “let everything go,”[4] and go to sleep.  This poem, though beautifully written in my opinion, is also devastatingly sad.  To think that a man who works all day cannot enjoy something so simple as twilight without feeling depression or guilt, is a horrible thought.  This poem introduces the village as a place controlled too tightly by some values, such as hard work, and too little influenced by other beliefs, like the idea that beauty should be enjoyed.  In other words, this poem sets a tone for the rest of the book, warning its readers that though A Village Life may be stunningly beautiful, it cannot be appreciated without sadness. 

Though oppression plays a large role in this book, it is not the only theme.  Another main theme present in A Village Life is a love of the past.  Most of the poems are reminiscences, comparing the ways things are to the way things once were.  In the poem, “Tributaries,” the speaker discusses her journey through life, starting at the center of everything and, by age or centrifugal force, being pushed to the edge.  She describes a fountain in the middle of a village square.  In the fountain, children play, occupying the center of attention.  Young couples sit on the edge of the fountain, “splashing their sweethearts with fountain water,”[5] while mothers watch their children and “talk to one another, maybe meet a young man, see if there’s anything left of their beauty.  When they look down, it’s a sad moment; the water isn’t encouraging.”[6]  These women are dreaming about their youth and can get away with it, until, of course, they see their own reflection. Around the fountain are metal tables, the seats taken by the elderly.  Though they have spun out to the edge of life, they do not yearn for their youth.  Instead, they watch the others, fascinated.

“The mothers are tired constantly, the children are always fighting,

the husbands at work or angry.  No young man comes.

The couples are like an image from some faraway time, an echo coming

very faint from the mountains.”[7] 

This poem reeks of the oppressing values present in the village.  It is assumed that the husbands are either constantly working or in a constant state of anger.  The young couples are “like an image from some faraway time,” suggesting that they appear like characters in a fairy tale.  One can assume that this means they are not being particularly showy with their feelings, meaning they are oppressed by embarrassment and guilt.  Another poem, “At the River,” delves further into this embarrassment.  “At the River” is a poem about the speaker’s mother explaining sexual intercourse to her daughter.  The poem begins with the speaker saying her mother wanted to tell her about “pleasure.”  But daughter soon understands that, to her mother, sex and pleasure are certainly not the same thing. The mother is embarrassed by the whole ordeal and takes her daughters hand “as though somebody in the family had just died.”[8]  She tries to explain it unemotionally, but ends up making herself sound like a “speech about mechanical engineering than a conversation about pleasure.”[9]  The poem delves deeper into the mother and why she cannot seem to explain sex well.  The speaker offers an explanation by saying; “she and my father did not have a language for what they did which, from what I could judge, wasn’t pleasure.”[10]  This is obviously a society that cannot feel comfortable with sexuality in any form.  This is just further evidence that the village is oppressed by outdated beliefs and social constraints.

Another poem that epitomizes the feeling of oppression in the village is “Harvest.” Though the oppression in this poem does not appear as blatantly as it does in the other poems, it is able to pick up through the anxiety and guilt expressed in word choice.  The poem begins with a discussion about tomatoes:

“It’s autumn in the market-

Not wise anymore to buy tomatoes”[11]

The beginning is innocent enough, but the poem then seems to take a turn for the sinister:

“They’re beautiful still on the outside,

Some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties

Misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oil cloth-“[12]

The idea of tomatoes as human brains is quite a terrifying image.  Sadly, it only gets worse from there.

“Inside, they’re gone.  Black, moldy-

you can’t take a bit without anxiety.”[13]

The speaker cannot even observe tomatoes at a market without imagining the worst.  This demonstrates the theme of suspicion and anxiety that runs throughout many of the poems. 

The book A Village Life is rife with strife!  Though its poems are beautiful, emotional works of art, they leak sad feeling all over a reader’s desk.  Every poem is created to express grief, oppression, heartbreak, and disappointment through its form, voice, and word choice.  There is not one poem in this entire book that is actually happy.  Of course, that is not surprising.  It is hard to find a revered piece of contemporary poetry that speaks only of happiness or contentment.  Of course, there are some poems in this book that speak of enjoyable tasks.  However, these tasks are discussed in comparison to other painful, depressing topics.  A Village Life may seem lovely, but the village itself is an oppressed community, unable to take joy in life.  

I have to say, reading this book was definitely worth my time.  However, analyzing A Village Life sucked out all the emotional reactions I had to it.  When I first read it, I was struck by its beauty and mystery, like I was reading investigative journalism about a secret society to which I didn't belong.  After reading it three times and stewing over the meaning of each poem, I felt like a member of society.  However, all this society does is sit around and sulk.  Not very fun.  In other words, reading poetry is fun. Thinking about poetry is fun.  Creating a thesis about works of poetry and then backing it up with evidence is not fun.  It isn't even satisfying.  I feel as though I've dishonored the poet herself by assuming to understand what she was trying to communicate.  But that's just me.

---

[1] Louise Glück. A Village Life. page 46 New York: Farrar, Straus, And Giroux, 2009. Print.

[2] Ibid., 32

[3] Ibid., 3

[4] Ibid., 3

[5] Ibid., 6

[6] Ibid., 6

[7] Ibid., 6

[8] Ibid., 21

[9] Ibid., 21

[10] Ibid., 21

[11] Ibid., 41

[12] Ibid., 41

[13] Ibid., 41

Bibliography:

Glück, Louise. A Village Life.  New York: Farrar, Straus, And Giroux, 2009. Print.

A long story and then some talk.

here is the poem I analyzed!

The Road to Hell

For a long time, walking it,
         we sang Woody Guthrie songs,
This land is your land, this land is my land,
         and got along

with whoever came our way, although, to be honest,
         few came back
and those who did had downcast eyes,
         a sort of sad sack

hangdog look to them. For some reason
         no cars were on that road,
no towns either. Sometimes an eagle
         would bank to the west. No Good

Will Come of This, a bullet-pocked
         stop sign read. Luckily,
we carried provisions: Spam, fruit-flavored
         water in plastic bottles, brie

to spread on small crackers. And we wore
         sensible shoes laced up tight,
loose-fitting jackets. In the distance,
         just short of night

we could make out the glow of Hell,
         a kind of red halo
hanging over its cities. It was then
         we knew enough to throw

the last of our good intentions down
         and walked the final miles
free as proverbial birds, well-intended,
         wreathed in our satisfied smiles.

Dick Allen

I have walked across Oregon.  Not literally, of course, walking across Oregon would require scheduled food drop-offs by car and plane.  But I have walked across Oregon in, I suppose, the figurative sense of the word.  My father grew up in Oregon, my grandparents reside in Oregon, and this means that from birth, I was destined to spend many a vacation there.  These vacations were not spent lazing about the Portland Embassy Suites, however.  While my mother chatted and sipped white wine with my great aunt throughout most of these vacation days, my father and sister and I were out exploring the land.  Now, I liked hiking.  Especially in Oregon.  I liked the weird transitions from desert to barren lava rock and from lava rock to pine forest.  I liked seeing the oddballs who were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail barefoot.  I did not like hiking with my dad.  When we were younger, it was alright.  Dad would stick to trails, bring snacks, and let us rest if we were tired.  However, the older we became, the more reckless my father would become.  I remember him climbing onto a specifically roped off rock that was precariously balancing on another rock that was on the edge of a cliff just to get a good picture.  I remember him making us hike the “more scenic route” on Mt.  Hood.  But one of my most memorable hikes with my father was when it was just him and me.  We were walking a trail that the guide book said would be a loop.  After walking four miles and the trail abruptly ending with no turnaround in sight, my father decided to make his own loop.  We had been walking next to a river the first four miles and my father thought it would be a good idea to cross the river and continue on the other side.  (He was sure there was a trail over there.)  After crossing, we saw a picnic spot, a pile of trash, a road, but no trail.  This did not stop my father.  He decided that we would walk on the road until we saw a trail head.  He assured me that we would be fine as long as we could see the river.  After half a mile and no trail head, I urged dad that we go back.  He was stubborn.  He refused to back-track.  We walked for about a mile and a half more and ran into a camp ground.  We asked a family unpacking an F-150 if there was a trail nearby and if not, were we headed in the right direction.  They looked at us and sighed.  They informed us that the river forked about a mile and a half back, and we had been walking east instead of south.  All we could do was backtrack. 

            This was not a very exciting story.  But this is what I thought when I read this poem.  When walking those two faithful miles in the complete wrong direction, the words echoing in my head were “This is the road to Hell.”  Every heavy hiking boot falling on the road patted out the words; road. to. hell. road. to. hell.  It didn’t look like hell, sun was dappled through the trees, bird were chirping somewhere unseen, but in my head was absolute hate.  Hate for hikes, hate for stubbornness, and yes, hate for my father.  But this poem is not like that story.  This poem is like a well-planned trip, with good maps, and accurate guide books, nature sightseeing, and tasty food.  It is obvious that the people heading to hell want to get there; they seem prepared and almost optimistic about their futures.  The mention of the Woody Guthrie song seems to imply a sense of ownership over the road, though not a territorial one with the mention of amiable behavior with those passing on it.  These others, walking back from the great destination seem defeated and deflated.  I imagine them with dull, lightless eyes and slightly singed hair, smelling of cigarette smoke.  But for some strange reason, these people don’t seem discourage the narrating crowd.  Nor does the complete lack of civilization on the sides of the road.  After all, who would build a hotel on the road to hell?  You couldn’t really list local attractions on your pamphlets or say “Have a nice stay.” The sign telling them that “no good will come of this” seems to have no effect on them.  They seem to take in these details as if they were insignificant, if slightly amusing. 

I imagine this group of people to be corporate thirty-somethings, a group of friends, deciding to take a trip together.  I feel like this trip to hell is symbolic of something more.  I feel like their walk to hell is like their trip up a corporate ladder and their arrival at hell is symbolic of them selling their soul to the corporation.  No wonder people can’t walk away from that without looking a little dead in the eyes.  As soon as they said brie spread on tiny crackers, I imagined large office parties, full of unenlightening conversation.  The line about sensible footwear brought to mind images of men wearing oxford shoes quietly stepping down carpeted office building hallways.  The loose-fitting jackets made me think about men button and unbuttoning their sport coats and suit jackets as they sit down and get up from lunch meetings.  The line about being free as proverbial birds was interesting to me because they referred to birds as being proverbial, making me think that they had spent so long in their offices, that the only birds they had been seeing were the ones that crashed bloodily into their floor to ceiling windows.  The last line appears to be talking about something simple; satisfied smiles.  However, I feel like these smiles were achieved only after crushing countless other souls under their heels with the force of pure ambition.  That is what hell is about;  throwing other people under the “proverbial” bus.