The Seven Ages (Paperback)

~ Louise Gluck (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Since the mid-1970s, critics and readers have admired Glck's spare, deceptively simple style; her poems subject the autobiographical, even confessional impulse to analytical rigor, arranging soul-searching questions and symbols into sequences frequently modeled on famous old texts the Odyssey or the biblical Creation. The stark intensities and challenging questions in Gluck's ninth book of poems investigate the disappointments, unfinished quests and unanswered questions that compose, arrange and ruin a life Glck's own, for example, and that of her older sister, who plays the pivotal role husbands and parents have played in some of her previous work. Glck dares her readers to ask, as they might have in childhood, general, harrowing questions: "Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant?" She dares herself, as well, to live without answers: "I'm awake; I am in the world / I expect/ no further assurance." Careful scenes, queries and moments of self-analysis throughout the volume investigate time the ways in which we change in the course of a lifetime; the ways our minds change from moment to moment; and the ways in which time changes everything, creating "a world in process/ of shifting, of being made or dissolved,/ and yet we didn't live that way." Considering age and aging, summer and fall, "stasis" and constant loss, Gluck's new poems often forsake the light touch of her last few books for the grim wisdom she sought in the 1980s; at the same time, her lines on herself, young and old, and on these stages for her sister and herself, are frequently wise, densely crafted meditations on the odd possibility of "actual human growth." (Apr.)Forecast: Gluck won a Pulitzer, and a wider audience, with The Wild Iris (1993); subsequent explorations of more comic and casual modes have met mixed response. Last year's Vita Nova, however, was recently awarded the biannual Bollingen prize (including $50,000 cash) given by Yale University Library in honor of a recently published American collection which should generate sales for both books.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

"Ashes, disappointment" breathes one poem in this latest collection from Pulitzer Prize winner Gl?ck (The Wild Iris), and indeed the tone of this entire collection is melancholic. The narrator frequently appears as a sort of seraphic messenger, send "back to the world" and none too happy about it: this is a place of hunger and desire, of the need to possess and the distress of never quite doing so. Many of the poems have the feel of fairy tales or fables (one is even called "Fable"); poems about the poet's childhood, frequently featuring her sister, are more earthbound and prosaic. As always, Gl?ck demonstrates incredible craft; this is assured and quietly beautiful poetry. The incessant twilight can wear, however; when a poem complains "We read, we listened to the radio./ Obviously this wasn't life," one is tempted to mutter, "Well, what is?" For most contemporary collections. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Ecco (March 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060933496
• ISBN-13: 978-0060933494
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #325,216 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jaguarian Grace, February 7, 2003

By	"rchoyland" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

I recently saw a review of Louise Glück's "The Seven Ages." With a kind of innocent wantonness, the reviewer dismissed the worthiness of Gluck's collective output, and flatly declared the book to be without idea, philosophy, pleasure.

In a perfect world, people would be shot for less, and organ procurement teams notified.

Glück strips. She prefers elemental language---hers is a hard-body and athletic poetry---but her sparsity never short-changes emotional impact, borealistic or far subtler. To wit, from "Youth;"

"My sister and I at two ends of the sofa,
reading (I suppose) English novels.
The television on; various schoolbooks open,
or places marked with sheets of lined paper.
Euclid, Pythagoras. As though we had looked into
the origin of thought and preferred novels."

Her subject matter, if not the whole of the world and us in it, frequently takes the form of love---real love, passionate love, the opiate kind come riding zephyrs, powerful enough to border hystericism, such is its biological power. This focus also includes at times the unhappy aftermath, such as is found in "The Balcony":

"It was a night like this, at the end of summer.

We had rented, I remember, a room with a balcony.
How many days and nights? Five, perhaps-no more.

Even when we weren't touching we were making love.
We stood on our little balcony in the summer night.
And off somewhere, the sounds of human life.

We were the soon to be anointed monarchs,
well disposed to our subjects. Just beneath us,
sounds of a radio playing, an aria we didn't in those years know.

Someone dying of love. Someone from whom time had taken
the only happiness, who was alone now,
impoverished, without beauty.

The rapturous notes of an unendurable grief, of isolation and terror,
the nearly impossible to sustain slow phrases of the ascending figures-
they drifted out over the dark water
like an ecstasy.

Such a small mistake. And many years later,
the only thing left of that night, of the hours in that room."

We get the whole of it: the event experienced, the event witnessed, the event's ramifications as prophecy, and finally the unretainable ecstasy and brutal wisdom of the high-country moment, returned to everyday living, so far as possible. Contrary to unpopular opinion, Glück's latest work makes the most of idea and philosophy and pleasure, embodied in its paced and quiet understatement, signifying its origins in the truly genuine. The Seven Ages rings with the sharp strike of the authentic, rarely sinking into the echoes of sentimentality.

Really, is another round of balloting necessary to induct Glück into a mythical poetry hall of fame? This one goes on the first ballot.

Read the book. More ripe delights await.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant, idiosyncratic, April 24, 2003

By	I X Key "burningfield" (tomorrow) - See all my reviews

Salient in this book is Louise Gluck's absolute brilliant mastery of every aspect of poetry. She said somewhere that this was her weirdest book yet. It's not among the most experimental poetry published today; it's unique great Louise Gluck. Every word in every poem feels like a monumental perfection.

I hope this review has been helpful to you.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Had this collection not born the prestige of her name and an award, would we still like it?, May 18, 2009

By	Natalie Rell "N.R." (Annapolis, Maryland) - See all my reviews

Let's break this down. Louise Gluck's reputation precedes her poetry, so much so that I persuaded myself into buying this book, sayiing "It must be good."

There are good lines:
"Time was moving in one direction, like a wave lifting
the whole house, the whole village."

but the same poem (Radium) includes the shockingly cliche and ineffective:
"we were growing up. But
it wasn't something you decided to do;
it was something that happened, something
you couldn't control."

Really, Gluck? You give us an absolute gorgeous poem like "Ancient Text" in which "night and day, angels were/ discussing my meanings. Night and Day, I revised my appeals...I spoke only to angels." More gorgeous lines like "when I didn't move I was more perfect."

Really, Gluck? You couldn't give us consistently good poems? Her strength--her simplicity, the way she constructs lightning-quick intelligent statements--ultimately turns into her weakness: flat, meaningless lines that sink into their own prosaic predictability. Some of the reviews for some reason mention Plath. I wouldn't want Gluck to go that far in her style (I'm not a fan of Plath's--shoot me). But in this collection, I could have done with more energy and not so many declarative monotonous poems.

I was disappointed in this collection, though there are some great poems in here. Buy if you can, get a copy of it cheap and read poems like "Summer at the Beach," "Ancient Texts" "Youth" and "Ripe Peach" and "Unpainted Door."

We must have higher standards for ourselves, though I really admire her commitment to intellectualism--a rarity in contemporary American poetry.

Better luck next time, Louise.