Wild Iris

Gluck Louise

Helen Vendler wrote in "The New Republic": "Louise Gluck is a poet of strong and haunting presence. Her poems, published in a series of memorable books over the last twenty years, have achieved the unusual distinction of being neither 'confessional' nor 'intellectual' in the usual senses of those words, which are often thought to represent two camps in the life of poetry".

What a strange book "The Wild Iris" is, appearing in this fin-de-siecle, written in the language of flowers. It is a lieder cycle, with all the mournful cadences of that form. It wagers everything on the poetic energy remaining in the old troubadour image of the spring, the Biblical lilies of the field, natural resurrection.

About the Author

Louise Gluck, born in 1943, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris. She has published eleven books of poetry and a book of essays on poetry, "Proofs and Theories" (1994). She teaches at Yale University as Writer in Residence and in the Creative Writing Program of Boston University. She was appointed the US Poet Laureate from 2003-2004.

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