Customer Reviews

Meadowlands

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anyone who tries to walk in Homer's shoes has got to be a very good poet. Failure would bring certain ridicule from Pulitzer peers. Louise Gluck lives up to her reputation as a leading contemporary poet with "Meadowlands." The book is worth buying, may be enjoyed by most poetry readers, and is nearly 100 percent satisfying. Gluck has presented 46 poems in a story of three lives during a marriage that is falling apart: Odysseus, Penelope, and their son, Telemachus.

Gluck presents her poems in several groupings within the book. There are nine entitled "Parables" of one sort or another that tell symbolic tales. There are a number of dialog poems between the man and the woman-he said, she said-that are free-spirited and very direct. There are sirens and a Circe, of course, who are very sexy, but tend to screw things up for the marriage. There are a series of observations by Telemachus, the unfortunate victim of this relationship. Telemachus grows into manhood during this book, though strangely disappears too soon to assess his recovery, and that's the one unsatisfying detail for me. Unlike The Odyssey, Penelope and Odysseus don't get back together again at the end. I didn't notice a Polyphemus character. I would liked to have seen his unique perspective on this unfortunate situation.

Gluck writes of the usual stuff that wrecks a marriage: affairs, jealousy, decades-old gripes, the humdrum that magnifies to crime during the dissolution of a marriage. It's quite mundane stuff, but Gluck is wickedly precise in the telling. In the dialog poem "Ceremony," Odysseus says to Penelope:

one thing I've always hated
about you: I hate that you refuse
to have people at the house. Flaubert
had more friends and Flaubert
was a recluse

and Penelope responds:

Flaubert was crazy: he lived
with his mother...

I have deep friendships.
I have friendships
with other recluses.

Another example from my favorite poem in the book, "Anniversary," in which he says:

I said you could snuggle. That doesn't mean
your cold feet all over my (...) .

Someone should teach you how to act in bed.
What I think is you should keep your
extremities to yourself.

Look what you did-
you made the cat move.

and she replies:

You should pay attention to my feet.
You should picture them
the next time you see a hot fifteen year old.
Because there's a lot more where those feet come from.

Gluck revels in the personalities of her protagonists. The dialog poems were my favorites in the book. They do not invoke the Homeric tale. They were fresh and startling, even more so because of the Odyssey surrounding them. If you buy this book, please read them as a group (as you could do with the other groupings, too). I think you'll agree with me that the dialog poems are very special.

Tom Lombardo
Atlanta, GA

This is one of the best, if not the best, of Gluck's books so far (though I have not yet read Averno.) Gluck's understated sense of humor pervades the collection, which focuses on a contemporary couple's disintegrating relationship and the relationship between Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. The sharp bite of anger, bitterness, and confusion infuse the most personal poems, but again, a turn of wit often lifts the poem by the end. Emotionally resonant and deceptively simple, this collection bears frequent re-reading. As a poet, I have studied the structure of the book as a classic example of entwined themed poems. My favorite poems are in the voice of Circe, who states at the end of one poem: "If I wanted only to hold you,/ I could hold you prisoner." And the poem "Midnight," with the lines: " is this the way the heart/ behaves when it grieves: it wants to be/ alone with the garbage?"

Gluck's book Meadowlands is a collection of poems that intertwine the same way a novel does. The author connects the book with a contemporary marriage and a re-telling of Homer's The Odyssey. By showing this popular mythology alongside the modern work, Gluck is able to remind us themes of love, betrayl, loss, stubbornness and grief. These difficulties still exist between couples and all can relate to such struggles while reading her book. This pain further heightens the personal hurt the author is going through rather than others who just characterize it generally. Gluck has a way of portraying the characters in her work as actual people rather than figures. She gives them a point of view, color, and personality that other poets have yet been able to accomplish. For example, Telemachus' true feelings for his parents, which are not addressed in the original are imagined by Gluck to be resentment and confusion; this gives him the persona of a teenager that we know an can imagine. Not only is his opinion made more clearly, any reader who has witnessed fighting parents or has experienced it first hand can actual relate to his pain and identify with what he is feeling.
Through such famous figures, Meadowlands can explore such endless themes of love and humiliation. The reader discovers that contemporary life is the same as past. Gluck does this well by using The Odyssey and her private life to bring such situations to light. One can understand and appreciate mankind's bond of suffering by reading this book.

At first glance a departure from her previoius books. Certainly not as good, as a whole, as The Wild Iris, or Ararat. Thematically tight, circling around the journey of Odysseus and the homelife of those he left behind, this volume displays a new playfulness, a looseness. The dominant voice of the book is spite, told and retold in the eponymous series of poems, but not so simply: this is the voice of tedium, of love having struck daily life, tolerance instead of passion, annoyance instead of love, of two people who circle each other endlessly, never in the same emotional space at the same time. The product of love is loss, and hurt. But also hope. And tenderness. Magnificent monologues abound in this book. The worst that can be said is that the volume is tonally uneven, taking jarring leaps in time and vernacular. Also a few poems might seemed to me weak, to be neither thematically or narratively significant, nor were they solid poems alone. But the lasting image of the book is one of wistfulness, a defiant memory of the possibilities to come. A nice progression for those who have followed th arc of Gluck's writing.

Louise Glück's merger of the novel The Odyssey and her own life experiences in her marriage were brilliant. Instead of writing the poems through Odysseus's point of view she writes poems based on the point of views of the people around him: Penelope the wise and beautiful wife at home, Telemachus the timid and troubled son of Odysseus and Penelope, and Circe the enchantress who is said to turn men into "swine," are the three characters whose points of view are expressed in this poem. The subject of the book that intertwines Glück's marriage and the marriage of Odysseus and Penelope is the deterioration of marriages. Although in The Odyssey Penelope and Odysseus don't actually break up, Glück uses these mythological figures to question the foundation of marriages today. Glück shows that the deterioration of marriages in the past and those in the present are not dissimilar. Just as in The Odyssey Louise's marriage disintegrated because of neglect by the other spouse. Louise shows her neglect in the poem "The Wish" when she says "I wished for another poem." Just like Odysseus abandoning Penelope for his work Louise abandoned her marriage for her work. I think that Glück used her imagination to explain what she thought these characters were thinking at the time based on her own experiences. The point of view of the child caught in between the break up and one of the causes of the break up, the mistress and her utterance of the affair in the wife's ear. The relating of the modern marriage to Homer's book was beautifully written and expressed the underlying theme of the book very well and in some way people can really understand. Through Glück's use of dialogue between herself and her husband she shows' an openness. I love this book and I would recommend many people to buy it because it shows how the division of two people in a modern marriage isn't far from marriages in the past.

What makes a good marriage? Is it the willingness of one partner to put up with the cruelty and infidelity of another forever? Is it a devaluing of self to the point that one only sees the value of the other? These questions are difficult to answer and, in fact, one answer may not hold the truth for everyone who asks them. Yet, these questions are answered with a resounding yes in the ideal marriage; the one that has dominated mainstream thought for centuries; the marriage of Odysseus and Penelope.
It is, in fact, precisely this idea of marriage that Louise Gluck blows apart in her collection titled Meadowlands. By intertwining poems based on the famous marriage with poems about a modern day marriage that is falling apart, she shows us that there are always two sides to a story. She presents the voices of the modern couple in dialogical poems which help us see more clearly that these sides do exist. Her tone throughout these dialogues is somewhat humorous and almost lighthearted: as if we are simply witnessing a happy disagreement. In the poem "Ceremony" (Gluck 6-7), for example, the discussion begins with artichokes then moves into complaint and insult: "Living with you is like living/ at boarding school: / chicken Monday, fish Tuesday." Her presentation of both the good and the bad marriage together helps solidify the dichotomous nature of relationships.
Indeed, this double nature of relationships is underscored by powerful visions of what goes on behind the scenes of these two marriages. In the case of the modern day marriage, we see anger and bitterness surfacing in poems such as "Parable of the Beast, " which ends with the speaker describing pain inflicted by the other whom she refers to as an animal whose "teeth [are] already / deep in the flesh of another animal" (Gluck 25). In the case of the mythological marriage, we see pain that the strength of the marriage (if you will) inflicts on others who are directly affected by their relationship. Persona poems written in the voices of Circe, the Sirens and Telemachus all tell us that each of our relationships affect the others.
In the voice of Circe, for instance, we see a woman who loved Odysseus so much that she tried to keep him for herself. Because Gluck is using this together with a dissolving marriage, we are forced to see Circe as "the other woman." Her actions after the spell is broken are reminiscent of Fatal Attraction. First Circe seems calm about letting Odysseus go. Then Gluck shows the effect that this parting had on the other woman. In "Circe's Torment" the speaker says, "I regret bitterly/ the years of loving you in both / your presence and absence" and then goes on to curse her lover saying,
I refuse you
such feeling for your wife
as will let you
rest with her, I refuse
sleep again
if I cannot have you. (Gluck 45)
And in the modern day marriage the poem "The Rock" has that same kind of dark cursing feeling as the modern woman is wishing her lover to hell "not / permanently harmed but/ severely chastened, / as he has not been, here / on the surface" (Gluck 35). Gluck exposes all those nerves that can be and often are peeled back and left to the elements in both a strong marriage and one that will not survive.
The strong points of Meadowlands aside, the book does have a possible weak spot. It is possible that ot everyone who reads the book will be familiar with the myth of Odysseus and so will find the allusions and the references confusing. The title itself does not give the readers any help in the myth area although it ties in nicely with some the dialogue between the modern characters.
By pulling the past and the present together in a back and forth volley that tells the truth about the hidden part of the story; by allowing us to imagine the pain, the apathy, the grief between, around and underlying these relationships, Gluck not only proves herself skilled in the art of narrative and lyric poetry, but places herself successfully in the realm of experiment so common among the world of poetry today. It is this very experimentation, this weaving together of such a variety of voices, of feelings, of sounds, of dichotomies, that gives Meadowlands the power to explode our ideas about the perfect marriage and leave us with a better view of the other side.

Works Cited
Gluck, Louise. Meadowlands. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996. Print.

Meadowlands cracks open modern (and ancient) myths surrounding family life, marriage, and male/female relationships via mythic and candidly tales full of opposing personalities, repeated disagreements, and hard-earned insights. The pleasure, if you can call it that, can be found amidst the pain: readers are reminded that they are not alone in their own moments of grief or despair--and this reviewer at least thinks there's something to be said for that.

These unsectioned poems are uniformly neat, short, stylistically similar and best appreciated as a series since the veiled references and deeper implications regarding Glück's own marriage in poems like "Circe's Torment" and "Parable of the Swans" can't help but rise to the surface when paired alongside poems like "The Dream" and "Meadowlands (1, 2, 3)," which show Glück's marriage and family life on the brink of collapse.

In short, Meadowlands resonates; Glück's poems are indelible. Many touched me deeply, and poems such as "Siren" and "Midnight" do a better job than my own splanchnic nerves in terms of feeling. But don't look to Meadowlands for epiphany; it's more a remembering of things once known but long since forgotten. Poems like "Marina" make me feel understood: "My heart was a stone wall/you broke through anyway (30), and often my response was visceral. Ultimately, Meadowlands reminds me of Glück's own words--words that impart upon us the importance the role of reader has in the life of a poem/poet: When you read anything worth remembering, you liberate a human voice; you release into the world again a companion spirit" (Glück, Proofs). If you're open to it, perhaps you'll find a companion spirit in Meadowlands like I do each time I re-read it.

Meadowlands is a tight collection of accessible poems featuring candid conversations, provocative commentaries, opposing perspectives, sobering parables and poignant vignettes drawn from Glück's own life as well as guest appearances by Homer's Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. These unsectioned poems are uniformly neat, short, stylistically similar and best appreciated as a series since the veiled references and deeper implications regarding Glück's own marriage in poems like "Circe's Torment" and "Parable of the Swans" can't help but rise to the surface when paired alongside poems like "The Dream" and "Meadowlands (1, 2, 3)," which show Glück's marriage and family life on the brink of collapse. The drawback to Meadowlands is that despite well timed infusions of levity readers end up on a distressing modern odyssey of sorts--a ride too often weighed down by moments of private suffering made public. Unfortunately, it's a ride many of us 1.) are all too familiar with, and 2.) prefer to avoid, especially during playtime.

Meadowlands provides "teachable moments" while cracking open modern (and ancient) myths surrounding family life, marriage, and male/female relationships via mythic and candidly tales full of opposing personalities, repeated disagreements, and hard-earned insights. The pleasure, if you can call it that, can be found amidst the pain: readers are reminded that they are not alone in their own moments of grief or despair--and this reviewer at least thinks there's something to be said for that.

However, despite well-timed infusions of humor, there's little joy to be found except for Schadenfreude or the tempered joy that comes from reading something that makes you feel less alone with your own pain. Even poems that start out with hopeful lines like "Otis," which begins with "A beautiful morning" waste no time turning somber: "nothing/died in the night" (Glück 57); such poems make me wonder about Glück's definition of beauty and happiness.

In the end, though, Meadowlands resonates; Glück's poems are indelible. Many touched me deeply, and poems such as "Siren" and "Midnight" do a better job than my own splanchnic nerves in terms of feeling. But don't look to Meadowlands for epiphany; it's more a remembering of things once known but long since forgotten. Poems like "Marina" make me feel understood: "My heart was a stone wall/you broke through anyway (30), and often my response was visceral. Ultimately, Meadowlands reminds me of Glück's own words--words that impart upon us the importance the role of reader has in the life of a poem/poet: When you read anything worth remembering, you liberate a human voice; you release into the world again a companion spirit" (Glück, Proofs). If you're open to it, perhaps you'll find a companion spirit in Meadowlands like I do each time I re-read it.

Few poets would ever compare themselves to Homer, or even compare their work to his. Doing so would create an unbelievable amount of pressure on said poet: their poem(s) in question would have to be just as good as his work, and puritans would be very hard to convince.

Louise Glück adventures into this territory and comes out unscathed. Louise is no first timer to poetry collections, she knows what she's doing and it shows. Many poems in this book are about her and her husband, while others are about the characters in Homer's The Odyssey. Having these two different kinds of poems in the book at different times inflicts a great compare/contrast attitude to the reader. Not only do the inclusions of The Odyssey characters give an interesting comparison, it also elaborates on secondary characters in the book that Homer did not develop deeply. Characters like Telemachus, Odysseus' son, have their own poems with their own views on the situations going on.

Glück's writing style is somewhat simple. For people who don't normally read poetry, you usually will have to sit with two books when reading: the book, and a dictionary. However, the down-to-earth straightforward style in Meadowlands has it so that you can just sit comfortably with just the poem book itself, leaving the heavy dictionary out of the picture. Some will say that this brings the book down, that the fact that it's so simple takes away from the feeling of the book. This is most certainly not true. The way Glück describes the couple and how they interact with each other can be fairly shocking at times. One such poem, "Heart's Desire," has the two discussing a party idea. The woman says she's only going to invite people who can cook, and "all my old lovers."

Glück's book shows the truth of marriages, how they really are and how people start to really act toward one another when they've been together so long. This book of poems is worth the read for anyone interested in The Odyssey, marriages that are on the rocks, or anyone who can appreciate good, simple poetry.

Louise Gluck's book is not just an ordinary book of lyrical poetry. Her poems collaborates on marriage, and the difficulties associated with the marriage of The Odyssey. Her poems are like a story, and readers can't wait to see what is written on the next page. Each story is related because each has to do with a certain situation in life. In a way, each story is connected. Later poems pick up where other poems are left off. Meadowlands is a book of different voices. I love how she portrays the women as a powerful voice. Unlike The Odyssey which deals with Odysseus and his voyage, Gluck makes sure that the characters not portrayed as much in the book, to have a voice. For example, Circe was Odysseus's conquest. He had an affair with her, and left to return home. In The Odyssey, we do not know how she is feeling nor did we care. Gluck however shows her emotion, and anger. We can connect with her, and feel her pain because she is hurt. Penelope represents a woman whom in a relationship bickers, argues about taking out the garbage, and throwing a dysfunctional party. She does not exactly represent Gluck as a whole. Not only are the womens voices heard, but Telemachus who is Penelope and Odysseus's son is also heard. Telemachus represents a mature child who adjusts to the worst of his parents experiences. He represents the possibility of love or loving. Teenagers who read this poem can relate to the hardships of not being loved by their parents. In a way, Gluck transforms herself into these different characters to show the different aspects of her personality. The scheme of the books elaborates on the characters of the Odyssey to tell the story of dissolving marriage, tension, and no longer being in love. The poems talk of difficulties in communication, misunderstanding, and hardships. Meadowlands is in some ways very funny, and others you feel for her. Gluck portrays the everyday with the mythic. We almost want to believe that the marriage she talks of in her book is like an autobiography. The poems are composed in dialogue, however there is no he said she said. It is up to the imagination of the reader to believe if it Louise or not. Everyone will agree that the dialogues in these poems are special, and emotional. The book should be read as a whole rather than in parts.