A Village Life Book

A Village Life, Louise Glückâ??s eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place: All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Treesâ??The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.â??from â??tributariesâ? Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountainâ??s opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed. Glück has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as â??the type of describing, supervising intelligence found in novels rather than poetry,â? as Langdon Hammer has written of her long linesâ??expansive, fluent, and fullâ??manifesting a calm omniscience. While Glückâ??s manner is novelistic, she focuses not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible.Read More