I'm starting to become a fan of Louise Glück

Louise Glück.

Have you ever heard of her?

I hadn't either, until about, oh, a week and a half ago.

At first, to be honest, I thought she was deceased. Turns out Ms. Gluck is still very much among the living, something I'm beginning to be thankful for as I read more of what she's written.

You should read First Memory

Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was--
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved. 

And then after that, The Night Migrations 

This is the moment when you see again the red berries of the mountain ash and in the dark sky the birds' night migrations. It grieves me to think the dead won't see them— these things we depend on, they disappear. What will the soul do for solace then? I tell myself maybe it won't need these pleasures anymore; maybe just not being is simply enough, hard as that is to imagine. Why read them in that order? Because that's the order that I read them in. They both seem so melancholy and meditative, and they remind me of Billy Collins' The First Dream. If you haven't read that either, you should. But yeah, Louise Gluck. And these two poems. They are so open and honest and striking in their loneliness. I'm waiting for them to take a more optimistic turn, but that doesn't seem likely or even necessary. ~ Viscountess, 2012-13