Louise Glück

"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."

—Louise Glück, “The Night Migrations”

Louise Glück had become a dear friend to me over the last few years. She was the first poet I ever met. She was a regular at the last restaurant I worked at, Chez Panisse, which is how we came to know each other. She had been going there for over forty years. She and my partner Lila loved each other. The first spring Louise went back to Yale after spending the late fall and winter in Berkeley the two of them cried when they said goodbye to each other. 

In her writing she was as insightful into human character as Dostoevsky. I do not think there will come again a poet who was so adept at working with classical myth. Her work always asks: how does an extremely sensitive person live through trauma? What happens to us after we do horrible things to each other? How do we live? Is this the way? What does Persephone tell herself, as she is forced underground again for half a year? 

Louise was the one who recommended I go to my first writers’ conference in Napa in 2021, which initiated so much for me. She was the first poet to encourage me. Which was incredible, as I grew up reading her, and she was a massive influence on my work. Every time she was in town I would either cook for her or we would go get Chinese food. She loved the cakes I made for her and would always want my recipes. She gave us her ice cream machine because she wanted us to be able to make ice cream whenever we wanted. She was a great cook and took enormous pleasure in eating. I loved being around her. She was one of the most sensitive and intelligent people I ever met. Her intelligence allowed her to find her way through any trauma.

This is one of my favorite poems by her. Out of many. "Nostos" is the Greek term for a homecoming, usually after a long sea voyage. 

Nostos

There was an apple tree in the yard—

this would have been 

forty years ago—behind,

only meadow. Drifts

of crocus in the damp grass.

I stood at that window: 

late April. Spring

flowers in the neighbor's yard.

How many times, really, did the tree 

flower on my birthday, 

the exact day, not 

before, not after? Substitution

of the immutable

for the shifting, the evolving.

Substitution of the image 

for relentless earth. What 

do I know of this place,

the role of the tree for decades

taken by a bonsai, voices 

rising from the tennis courts—

Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.

As one expects of a lyric poet. 

We look at the world once, in childhood. 

The rest is memory.