Meadowlands

by Louise Glück

Book Overview

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

In an astonishing book-length sequence, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Gluck interweaves the dissolution of a contemporary marriage with the story of The Odyssey.

Here is Penelope stubbornly weaving, elevating the act of waiting into an act of will; here, too, is a worldly Circe, a divided Odysseus, and a shrewd adolescent Telemachus. Through these classical...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0880015063
• ISBN13: 9780880015066
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 84 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Resonant, Indelible Collection of Deceptively Simple Poems

Meadowlands is a tight collection of accessible poems featuring candid conversations, provocative commentaries, opposing perspectives, sobering parables and poignant vignettes drawn from Glück's own life as well as guest appearances by Homer's Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. These unsectioned poems are uniformly neat, short, stylistically similar and best appreciated as a series since the veiled references and deeper implications regarding Glück's own marriage in poems like "Circe's Torment" and "Parable of the Swans" can't help but rise to the surface when paired alongside poems like "The Dream" and "Meadowlands (1, 2, 3)," which show Glück's marriage and family life on the brink of collapse. The drawback to Meadowlands is that despite well timed infusions of levity readers end up on a distressing modern odyssey of sorts--a ride too often weighed down by moments of private suffering made public. Unfortunately, it's a ride many of us 1.) are all too familiar with, and 2.) prefer to avoid, especially during playtime. Meadowlands provides "teachable moments" while cracking open modern (and ancient) myths surrounding family life, marriage, and male/female relationships via mythic and candidly tales full of opposing personalities, repeated disagreements, and hard-earned insights. The pleasure, if you can call it that, can be found amidst the pain: readers are reminded that they are not alone in their own moments of grief or despair--and this reviewer at least thinks there's something to be said for that. However, despite well-timed infusions of humor, there's little joy to be found except for Schadenfreude or the tempered joy that comes from reading something that makes you feel less alone with your own pain. Even poems that start out with hopeful lines like "Otis," which begins with "A beautiful morning" waste no time turning somber: "nothing/died in the night" (Glück 57); such poems make me wonder about Glück's definition of beauty and happiness. In the end, though, Meadowlands resonates; Glück's poems are indelible. Many touched me deeply, and poems such as "Siren" and "Midnight" do a better job than my own splanchnic nerves in terms of feeling. But don't look to Meadowlands for epiphany; it's more a remembering of things once known but long since forgotten. Poems like "Marina" make me feel understood: "My heart was a stone wall/you broke through anyway (30), and often my response was visceral. Ultimately, Meadowlands reminds me of Glück's own words--words that impart upon us the importance the role of reader has in the life of a poem/poet: When you read anything worth remembering, you liberate a human voice; you release into the world again a companion spirit" (Glück, Proofs). If you're open to it, perhaps you'll find a companion spirit in Meadowlands like I do each time I re-read it.

Resonant, Indelible Collection of Deceptively Simple Poems

Meadowlands cracks open modern (and ancient) myths surrounding family life, marriage, and male/female relationships via mythic and candidly tales full of opposing personalities, repeated disagreements, and hard-earned insights. The pleasure, if you can call it that, can be found amidst the pain: readers are reminded that they are not alone in their own moments of grief or despair--and this reviewer at least thinks there's something to be said for that. These unsectioned poems are uniformly neat, short, stylistically similar and best appreciated as a series since the veiled references and deeper implications regarding Glück's own marriage in poems like "Circe's Torment" and "Parable of the Swans" can't help but rise to the surface when paired alongside poems like "The Dream" and "Meadowlands (1, 2, 3)," which show Glück's marriage and family life on the brink of collapse. In short, Meadowlands resonates; Glück's poems are indelible. Many touched me deeply, and poems such as "Siren" and "Midnight" do a better job than my own splanchnic nerves in terms of feeling. But don't look to Meadowlands for epiphany; it's more a remembering of things once known but long since forgotten. Poems like "Marina" make me feel understood: "My heart was a stone wall/you broke through anyway (30), and often my response was visceral. Ultimately, Meadowlands reminds me of Glück's own words--words that impart upon us the importance the role of reader has in the life of a poem/poet: When you read anything worth remembering, you liberate a human voice; you release into the world again a companion spirit" (Glück, Proofs). If you're open to it, perhaps you'll find a companion spirit in Meadowlands like I do each time I re-read it.

Complex, dry, witty, and biting

This is one of the best, if not the best, of Gluck's books so far (though I have not yet read Averno.) Gluck's understated sense of humor pervades the collection, which focuses on a contemporary couple's disintegrating relationship and the relationship between Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. The sharp bite of anger, bitterness, and confusion infuse the most personal poems, but again, a turn of wit often lifts the poem by the end. Emotionally resonant and deceptively simple, this collection bears frequent re-reading. As a poet, I have studied the structure of the book as a classic example of entwined themed poems. My favorite poems are in the voice of Circe, who states at the end of one poem: "If I wanted only to hold you,/ I could hold you prisoner." And the poem "Midnight," with the lines: " is this the way the heart/ behaves when it grieves: it wants to be/ alone with the garbage?"

reality with famous fiction

Gluck's book Meadowlands is a collection of poems that intertwine the same way a novel does. The author connects the book with a contemporary marriage and a re-telling of Homer's The Odyssey. By showing this popular mythology alongside the modern work, Gluck is able to remind us themes of love, betrayl, loss, stubbornness and grief. These difficulties still exist between couples and all can relate to such struggles while reading her book. This pain further heightens the personal hurt the author is going through rather than others who just characterize it generally. Gluck has a way of portraying the characters in her work as actual people rather than figures. She gives them a point of view, color, and personality that other poets have yet been able to accomplish. For example, Telemachus' true feelings for his parents, which are not addressed in the original are imagined by Gluck to be resentment and confusion; this gives him the persona of a teenager that we know an can imagine. Not only is his opinion made more clearly, any reader who has witnessed fighting parents or has experienced it first hand can actual relate to his pain and identify with what he is feeling. Through such famous figures, Meadowlands can explore such endless themes of love and humiliation. The reader discovers that contemporary life is the same as past. Gluck does this well by using The Odyssey and her private life to bring such situations to light. One can understand and appreciate mankind's bond of suffering by reading this book.

Major Drama Peacefully Rendered

Major drama peacefully rendered in a slim volume of elegant poetic output