noniesrose's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
I had never heard of Louise Glück and her work before finding one of her books at the bookstore months ago. This is a bilingual (English-French) edition of Averno.
It was a pleasant read. I enjoyed this contemporary poetry book. It features mainly long poems divided into several short chapters. The poet writes about girlhood, innocence, the soul and the body, as well as the relationship between a mother and her daughter. Nature is also a very present theme with earth, flowers, winter, summer, rain, sun, the cold...
Most poems feel quite autobiographical while using Persephone as a metaphor: I don't think this could be seen as a (feminist) myth retelling, this is more the case of the writer expressing herself through the Persephone figure.
At the same time, a few poems are much more direct with the Persephone myth no longer used.
At times, maybe I'm dumb but I couldn't figure whose voice the poet was using (hers or Persephone's) because she mixed the first and third person povs within a poem. It was a bit confusing.
Altogether, I appreciated so many poems and so many lines without it necessarily speaking to me. It's just beautiful poetic writing.
'How privileged you are, to be still passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.' from "October".
'When you fall in love, my sister said,
it's like being struck by lightning.
[...]
I reminded her that she was repeating exactly
our mother's formula, which she and I
Had discussed in childhood, because we both felt
that what we were looking at in the adults
were the effects not of lightning
but of the electric chair.' from "Prism".
It was a pleasant read. I enjoyed this contemporary poetry book. It features mainly long poems divided into several short chapters. The poet writes about girlhood, innocence, the soul and the body, as well as the relationship between a mother and her daughter. Nature is also a very present theme with earth, flowers, winter, summer, rain, sun, the cold...
Most poems feel quite autobiographical while using Persephone as a metaphor: I don't think this could be seen as a (feminist) myth retelling, this is more the case of the writer expressing herself through the Persephone figure.
At the same time, a few poems are much more direct with the Persephone myth no longer used.
At times, maybe I'm dumb but I couldn't figure whose voice the poet was using (hers or Persephone's) because she mixed the first and third person povs within a poem. It was a bit confusing.
Altogether, I appreciated so many poems and so many lines without it necessarily speaking to me. It's just beautiful poetic writing.
'How privileged you are, to be still passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.' from "October".
'When you fall in love, my sister said,
it's like being struck by lightning.
[...]
I reminded her that she was repeating exactly
our mother's formula, which she and I
Had discussed in childhood, because we both felt
that what we were looking at in the adults
were the effects not of lightning
but of the electric chair.' from "Prism".
Content Warnings
Minor: Rape, War, Fire/Fire injury, and Death
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