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bobkat's review against another edition
5.0
Gluck reflects on her family, women left without a father. This collection is particularly cutting and dry.
thewhimsicalowl's review against another edition
4.0
April 2024: "She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image / capable of life apart from her... / The love of form is a love of endings" (Celestial Music).
Perhaps Glück's collection most devoted to family ties. Waiting, lament, the life of the soul.
Perhaps Glück's collection most devoted to family ties. Waiting, lament, the life of the soul.
bonzopoe's review against another edition
4.0
Una poesía anecdótica y autobiográfica que sorprende por la extrema sencillez de su lenguaje, y su capacidad de decir tanto con pocas palabras, y sin apoyarse en artilugios estilísticos.
masmasumi's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.5
Beautiful. A meditation on death and therefore life. A remembrance of family alive and gone. Exquisite in its succinctness.
theliteraryteapot's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
3.25
Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!
This is a new edition of Ararat, a poetry collection about family, loss and grief. Louise Glück has this great ability to reflect on her suffering. And doing so when it comes to family is not easy, there's such complexity in a family system and in generational trauma. She examines for instance sister dynamics, heterosexual marriage, or the place of a child and the love for your family you have to feel.
In Ararat, her writing is a bit different than her other two books that I have read (Averno and The Wild Iris). We depart from the usual mythological and religious figures (albeit not completely) to dive directly into the poetess’ very personal, intimate, life which brings this work closer to confessional poetry.
I admit, though, that I was not as enchanted by this collection as I was with Averno. For me, something was missing in the writing, although it feels a bit weird to say I felt underwhelmed considering the subject matter. Perhaps the bitterness emerging from the poems prevented me from engaging with the poetess' other emotions?
My favourite poems were: "New World", "Brown Circle", “Mirror Image”, “First Memory”.
This is a new edition of Ararat, a poetry collection about family, loss and grief. Louise Glück has this great ability to reflect on her suffering. And doing so when it comes to family is not easy, there's such complexity in a family system and in generational trauma. She examines for instance sister dynamics, heterosexual marriage, or the place of a child and the love for your family you have to feel.
In Ararat, her writing is a bit different than her other two books that I have read (Averno and The Wild Iris). We depart from the usual mythological and religious figures (albeit not completely) to dive directly into the poetess’ very personal, intimate, life which brings this work closer to confessional poetry.
I admit, though, that I was not as enchanted by this collection as I was with Averno. For me, something was missing in the writing, although it feels a bit weird to say I felt underwhelmed considering the subject matter. Perhaps the bitterness emerging from the poems prevented me from engaging with the poetess' other emotions?
My favourite poems were: "New World", "Brown Circle", “Mirror Image”, “First Memory”.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, and Death of parent
barel93's review against another edition
3.0
Provisional rating. I always come back to Glück's poetry to find I had missed so much. The last poem of this collection reveals you have been deceived, or rather that the poet has been deceiving herself. You must go back and re-read it with that revelation in mind.
First Memory
"Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was—
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.”
First Memory
"Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was—
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.”
christalei's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
tense
5.0
Louise Glück's Ararat is a masterpiece in deconstructing the typical nuclear family. 'Animals,' a poem that cuts to the heart of the collection, contains one of my singular favourite lines: "You should only hurt/something you can give/your whole heart to." Doesn't that say it all? I'm excited that this collection will be re-released with a beautiful cover. If you want to read about the intricacies of human life, the insecurities and flaws and the twisted dynamics any typical family will have-- while also grappling with how to live and raise others-- you should read Ararat. Glück's work is a masterpiece.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this edition.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this edition.