Customer Rating:  
Summary: Gluck slips a few notches.
Comment: Louise Gluck, Averno Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006)
I've never been entirely sure what to think of the work of Louise Gluck; Averno, however, has certainly tipped the balance into the "dislike" bucket. When she is good, she is very, very good; when she is bad, however, you get stuff like this:
"'You girls,' my mother said, 'should marry
someone like your father.'
That was one remark. Another was,
'There is no one like your father.'"
("Prism")
As pithy as the wisdom may be, the poetry is entirely absent. I'd expect this sort of thing in a run-of-the-mill memoir, not in a volume from a Pulitzer Prize-winner. On the other hand, as I said, when she's good, etc. Given a strong image and a slight difference in the way she works with repetition, she can craft some really great stuff:
"You get on a train, you disappear.
You write your name on the window, you disappear.
There are places like this everywhere,
places you enter as a young girl,
from which you never return."
("Averno")
I've added and subtracted a star from my rating of this book at least twenty times as I've mulled over how to review it, usually depending on which poem I happen to be contemplating at the time. While it's obviously a must for Gluck fans, those who are knew to her work should probably start somewhere else (the Pulitzer-winning The Wild Iris or her best [IMO] book, The House on Marshland). ***
Customer Rating:
Summary: Evocative and Earthly
Comment: Louise Gluck remains an elegant poet, able to evoke the mysteries of being crafted in the forms of gods while surviving our humanity. She is quick to capture our attention and lingers as we put her book aside in response to daily obligations.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Entrance to the Underworld: Death and Classicism
Comment: Louise Glück is a radiant poet. She molds her words and phrases, meter and lines, message and thoughts as a master craftsman. This is her tenth collection of poems and for this reader it is her finest.
The title of the book is the title of the poem ensemble: Averno is a small crater in Italy believed by ancient Romans to be the opening in earth's crust that provided a path to the underworld. It is in this setting that Glück retells the myth of Persephone in eighteen poems in a manner that visits death, anguish, dark lamentations all in a way that makes each of the poems like the intricate complex of a Chinese puzzle.
While some poets are content to re-visit the classics, 'translating' them into contemporary language, Glück is not satisfied to plagiarize. Instead she takes the myth and transforms it into paths to introspection, raising artful questions and thoughts that she adamantly refuses to answer for us. It is the work of a genius poet. It is a treasure of a book. Grady Harp, December 06
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fast, well packaged delivery
Comment: The book "Averno" appeared almost immediately after I ordered it. The service was efficient and the packaging was secure.
Customer Rating:
Summary: When I Think of Louise Gluck's Averno...
Comment: I can barely breathe. It's not because I'm a female in some kind of a swoon. It's because she never fails to tell the truth no matter how hard it might be to swallow. Also, most of the Master poets (among which Ms. Gluck surely is included) never, ever fail to tackle those dark, disturbing, complex places most of us refuse to even consider let alone pen as a work of art. As a result, this collection shines, literally, in the dark. I don't care if she uses an ancient mythic-metaphor that has been employed before. I don't care if some find it 'depressing.' But I very much care when a Masterpiece like this doesn't get the 5-star rating I believe it deserves. Ms. Gluck is among the most courageous poets worldwide. I'd say that puts her at the top of my list...exactly where she has always been.
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