Yes, John, I agree. Being that I've only thought that about some of your stuff, Sam, it was also very knee-jerk and unfair of me. And our own work should stay out of this anyway. I've withdrawn my comment.

I think Gluck is an exciting and excellent choice. Definitely a surprise, since her work has a more private feel to it than the usual Nobel winners. Or maybe inward is a better word for it. A bit like Tomas Transtromer in that regard, another marvelous poet.

This is the first poem of hers that blew me away. The spareness, the stunning intuitive connections: it still makes the hair on the back of my neck (such as it is) stand up.

ALL HALLOWS

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

Thanks for posting that poem, Andrew. I remember first reading it and hadn't thought of it in a long while. There is a quiet noise in some of her poems.

.
With all due respect, Sam, I don't expect formal poets to stand and clap — But her body of work is worthy of the recognition she has gotten over the decades for being a serious thinker about the predicament of being human. Why must she (or any poet) jump through hoops to say something important? To say it poetically well is what's important. Must every day require formal attire? Must every song be framed the same way? Must every work of art conform? I think you're being Sam. That's not a bad thing. But it is a thing. You are a noble representative of the old school, which continues to be new because of poets like you.

She is no more an outlier poet than the strict formalist. If you don't like jazz (or rock or folk or...) fine. But that doesn't make it illegitimate. It doesn't make it easy. I'd be curious to read a poem by you written in free verse. (Have you ever?) What is it you can't see in the poem "Dead End" in post #2 above? It is a brilliant example of rhyme and sound and meter.

And Quincy — Get off the fence and admit that if she were elevator music elevators would be, well, elevating in a way they aren’t with muzak. Louise Gluck is far, far, far from the "elevator music" I've heard that passes for poetry.
John Donne be damned, this year. Bring on the Lucie.
.
.

If it had been I who was judging, the prize would have gone to Jay Wright or Adonis. Glück is an unexpected but not unwelcome choice, there is a freshness to what she brings to the table.
I myself lean toward the loud rhythmic musics of the Walcotts and the surrealists, more than the quiet realists of Heaney and (now) Glück. Saying that, while I personally do not favour toward her aesthetic, I can still perceive the vast talent she has at her disposal.

Regards,
Cameron

From the New York Times story on the Prize:

William Logan, in a 2009 Times review of “A Village Life,” called Glück “perhaps the most popular literary poet in America.” Her audience may not be as large as others’, he wrote, but “part of her cachet is that her poems are like secret messages for the initiated.”
Ms.Gluck herself has expressed discomfort with the notion of her poetry as popular.
"When I'm told I have a large readership, I think, 'Oh great, I'm going to turn out to be Longfellow': somebody easy to understand, easy to like, the kind of diluted experience available to many. And I don't want to be Longfellow," she said in a 2009 interview with American Poet, journal of the Academy of American Poets.

Yeah, I've struck a cord with too many people-- what the fuck have I done? Ha. Well, it beats obscurity I suppose. And ensures employment. But I get her on that.

The poems by her posted in the thread are copyrighted material. They should probably be removed and/or replaced with links instead.

James and Jim, I don't care whether a poet is a formalist or not. What I do look for is exciting word choices, memorable lines, interesting rhetoric, and the turbulence of ambiguity that makes me work harder. I just don't find this in Gluck's work, which is not to say that she doesn't occasionally write good poems like the one above. I really doubt that many would rank her at the very top of contemporary American poetry, even though she has many admirers.

Always here for the slamming of Longfellow, so this endears me to her (as does the poem Frisardi posted)