She sets out to examine the "rift in the human soul / which was not constructed to belong / entirely to life," and asks how a soul that survives its bodily existence can possibly find solace, knowing that life's myriad delights - "the red berries of the mountain ash" and "the birds' night migrations" - are gone forever. The New York Times says "Glück takes up her own challenge, employing it to explore concepts like "mind" and "soul" with a fresh, often acidulous, perspective. Each part has five chapters.Īverno has frequently been referred to as a "modern classic" due to its everlasting topics and themes. The collection is divided into two parts. There are eighteen poems in the collection, and several are extended pieces with distinct, brief sections. Some reviewers praised Glück's non-resolution of these tensions. Throughout this poetry collection, Louise Glück blends classic mythology with eternal musings, taking us to the depths of the underworld and back, in poems which explore the afterlife, love, isolation, oblivion, and the soul. The Greek myth of Demeter's daughter Persephone and her marriage to Hades is a recurring topic in the collection, as are the themes of oblivion and death, soul and body, love and isolation. A small crater lake in southern Italy, Averno was regarded by the Romans as the entrance to the ancient underworld. It was a National Book Award Finalist for Poetry that year.Īverno or Lake Avernus is a lake west of Naples that the Romans mythologized as the entrance to the underworld. Averno is Louise Glück's tenth collection of poetry published in 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Averno is an extended lamentation, its long, restless poems no less spellbinding for being without conventional resoltution or consolation, no less ravishing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |