Today I read Louise Glück's "October". I read it every October. It's an injured reply to violence. (Domestic violence and early family violence is what I guess -- the exact violence is not clear but does not need to be, the poem works anyway.) The poem, about twelve pages long, is sad and beautiful. Available in a chapbook from Sarabande. Glück is not someone I would trust, personally -- I would not want to be her friend or her student, for example. I would not want to be married to or live with her. She's violent her own self, emotionally violent. And takes herself very seriously. Reading between the lines of her poems, the idea of her I get is: very smart, but dramatic and manipulative. I could be wrong entirely and maybe she is a jewel of a person through and through. Years ago I heard her read at LoC at the beginning of her term as Poet Laureate. Sycophants in the audience, sighing after every poem, one sitting directly behind me. A class of students was there probably under compulsion, and they shuffled and whined. She read very well, though, at a lectern in the front of the crowded room. I've read all of her published poems since her second book "The House on Marshland" and her poems continue to move me. They avoid, just barely, excessive drama. They're stark and damaged and they work really well. I'm cautious about Glück (and her disciples). Meanwhile I admire her.

Happy Hallowe'en. Boo!