You can read ‘October’ here.
Beauty redeems but it does not erase. That is the message of so much of Louise Glück’s poetry. Her work, like that of a scrappy center forward, has sharp elbows. It is preoccupied with violence, trauma, aging, forgetting, death. But it is not hopeless. When it succeeds, it is about as hopeful as it can be while remaining immersed in what Mark Johnston calls ‘the large-scale structural defects of human life’.
For me Glück’s purest collection is Averno. It gets its title from the crater outside of Naples that the Romans considered the entrance to the underworld. Within the crater is a lake. Legend has it that no bird can fly over without falling dead.
Averno is full of poems about transitions and their marks. Glück is spare and often brutal (“My body persisted. / Not thrived, but persisted. / Why I do not know.” ‘Echoes’). Humor is still near to hand— “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’). Partly because of this, she rarely veers into the Cormac McCarthy region of the darkness scale. It is also because she often takes on the role of a sort of Virgil to our Dante; a co-investigator into the large-scale structural defects (compared to McCarthy’s passive gaping at evil)
‘October’ is the second poem of the collection, the first in what is titled part I. It is broken up into 6 parts over 10 pages. It is difficult to keep track of when it is set. Part of it is definitely set in a very particular October. Other parts are less clear. This temporal dizziness is induced by part one, which is partly about how certain events can pull us out of time.
Is it winter again, is it cold again, didn't Frank just slip on the ice, didn't he heal, weren't the spring seeds planted didn't the night end, didn't the melting ice flood the narrow gutters wasn't my body rescued, wasn't it safe didn't the scar form, invisible above the injury terror and cold, didn't they just end, wasn't the back garden harrowed and planted— I remember how the earth felt, red and dense, in stiff rows, weren't the seeds planted, didn't vines climb the south wall I can't hear your voice for the wind cries, whistling over the bare ground I no longer care what sound it makes when was I silenced, when did it first seem pointless to describe that sound what it sounds like can't change what it is— didn't the night end, wasn't the earth safe when it was planted didn't we plant the seeds weren't we necessary to the earth, the vines, were they harvested?
This is uncharacteristically messy. One sentence, 21 questions. She’s trying to figure out when it is. Is it winter again? Were the vines harvested? She’s trying to figure this out in order to figure out how to feel. There is violence and its trauma somewhen. Are we far enough away from it to be ok?
Part 2 is characteristically precise. It starts,
Summer after summer has ended, balm after violence: it does me no good to be good to me now; violence has changed me.
We are in a day in a particular October. Violence has done its damage; Glück knows what it is and how it has changed her. She knows, further, that the world can deceive one into thinking that carefree summer has returned.
I know what I see; sun that could be the August sun, returning everything that was taken away—
She is not buying it.
You hear this voice? This is my mind's voice; you can't touch my body now.
Time moves on, the world appears as it did before. It tempts you to forget or forgive, to open yourself up. On this particular day in a particular October, Glück is attempting to turn away, retreating into the abstraction of her mind.
Tell me this is the future, I won't believe you. Tell me I'm living, I won't believe you.
Part 3 moves in time (forward or backward?) in order to provide a buoyant pivot.
Come to me, said the world. This is not to say it spoke in exact sentences but that I perceived beauty in this manner.
The world’s beauty is calling to Glück, asking her to open up. She does.
Winter was over. In the thawed dirt, bits of green were showing. Come to me, said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal— I can finally say long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty the healer, the teacher— death cannot harm me more than you have harmed me, my beloved life
The violence of winter is over and beauty is poking through. She is protected by her wool, but by opening up she can finally say long ago. She has passed the temporal threshold, far enough away for it to be ok.
That was then; this is October, as part 4 immediately reminds us.
The light has changed; middle C is tuned darker now. And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed. This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. The light of autumn: you will not be spared.
Trouble is nearby again. It is tempting to infer that the summer was illusory; that the passage of time tricked us into thinking beauty healed.
At this point something formally brilliant happens. Glück intertwines two lines of thought—what could be two separate short poems. She also changes the subject. Up to this point the poet is the subject. Now ‘You’ is the subject.
So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate: the ideal burns in you like a fever. Or not like a fever, like a second heart.
The second line of thought is about whether the summer was illusory.
The songs have changed; the unspeakable has entered them
After three stanzas she returns to this theme.
The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful. They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space of the mind. They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish. And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly in anticipation of silence. The ear gets used to them. The eye gets used to disappearances.
In October the world sounds different, but it is still quite beautiful. One needs to reconcile with a new sort of trouble. But the songs help, as they did in summer.
The penultimate stanza returns to You.
How privileged you are, to be still passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.
Hope has returned and has forfeited in light of the violence of September. It hasn’t destroyed You.
She then brings the two themes together and changes the subject once again, this time to ‘Us’ (‘maestoso, doloroso’: instructions to the musicians to play majestically, with sorrow).
Maestoso, doloroso: This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.
The end is nigh and the poet has retreated into herself. You have not been destroyed; you still believe in something. While that is a privilege, you get the sense the poet is disdainful.
Part 5 opens with perhaps my favorite Glück stanza.
It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.
The poet’s reaction is to work.
I am at work, though I am silent.
Not a good place for the poet to be. But this poet is not convinced of the point.
as though it was the artist's duty to create hope, but out of what? what? the word itself false, a device to refute perception
Admittedly, we’re rapidly approaching the McCarthy zone. Hope has forfeited and the poet cannot see how to create it. Even if she could, it doesn’t sound like she would.
The final part keeps the bleak slide going, especially for someone with Glück’s perspective.
My friend the earth is bitter; I think sunlight has failed her. Bitter or weary, it is hard to say. Between herself and the sun, something has ended. She wants, now, to be left alone; I think we must give up turning to her for affirmation.
This is a devastating result for Glück. In the earlier, buoyant, section 3, she says
What others found in art, I found in nature. What others found in human love, I found in nature.
Now, in October, we must give up seeking redemption in the earth. Where to turn. The poem ends:
Above the fields, above the roofs of the village houses, the brilliance that made all life possible becomes the cold stars. Lie still and watch: They give nothing but ask nothing. From within the earth's bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness my friend the moon rises: she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?
Just as the poet retreated from her body to her mind, now we retreat from the earth to the celestial. And the poet’s friend shows up, and she is, as she always is, beautiful.
It doesn’t matter which October the poet is speaking from. We will all be in one sooner or later—indeed, in many. In those times, the redemption of the summer might seem like a cruel illusion. They might also seem to be the beginnings of the inevitable annihilation of the winter; on one occasion, this will be the case. Beauty won’t change these facts, but it will still be there.
For some, it does matter which October Glück is speaking from. In October 2002, 13 months after violence that pierced the world view of so many in Glück’s position, The New Yorker published ‘October’ in a rare full two page spread. This adds a new hue to the end of part 5.
I was young here. Riding the subway with my small book as though to defend myself against this same world: you are not alone, the poem said, in the dark tunnel.