An all-time collection of intense and piercing poems, great for students and readers new to the form. I tend towards Glück at the college level, especially the family poems like these ones, because so much of what she writes feels immediate and visceral and relevant to all childhood. Love the new cover!

Louise Glück’s final collection is one of those books that lingers in your bones long after you’ve closed it. I’ve waded through my fair share of dense, overly cerebral poetry, but Glück is different. There’s no pretension here, no obfuscation for the sake of sounding profound. Just razor-sharp clarity and emotional precision that cuts right through you. The collection orbits around the death of her father, but it’s not just about grief—it’s about family as this fraught, messy ecosystem of love and resentment, silence and unspoken wounds.

The opening poem, "Parados," sets the tone with the killer line: “I was born to a vocation: / to bear witness / to the great mysteries.” And that’s exactly what she does—witnesses, dissects, refuses to look away, even when the truths are ugly. In "Brown Circle," she writes about motherhood with brutal honesty: “I don’t love my son / the way I meant to love him.” She’s like a surgeon with a scalpel, exposing the nerves.

The family dynamics here are recognizable—sibling rivalry ("Animals"), a distant father ("First Memory"), a mother whose love feels suffocating ("New World"). And yet, for all its darkness, there’s something cathartic about it: “I thought / that pain meant / I was not loved. / It meant I loved.”

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Beautiful in their bleakness, Louise Glück's poems in Ararat are predominantly about familial loss and grief, so don't do what I did and read this when you're already feeling down, because that was a rough go!

But oddly enough, I found respite in the moments when Glück touched on her female tribe, regardless of how fraught those relationships may have been, because she deftly captured the emotional labor women so often do for their family unit.

"Like echoes, the women last longer; they're all too tough for their own good."

Oof she got me right at the end there with "First Memory":
"I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved."

I sense this will grow on me even more with additional read-throughs (when I'm more emotionally prepared).

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Ararat is a collection about quiet grief and loss. The simple imagery highlights the emotions. This is a collection that needs some reflection and quiet time. It's beautiful, but very heavy.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this free review copy of a re-released edition of a classic.

This book is all about death. I knew Gluck tended to be a bit morose, but I wasn't expecting it to be all death all the time! If you're looking for a poem to read at a funeral, you'll find one here!!

<blockquote>from A FANTASY
<i>I’ll tell you something: every day
people are dying. And that’s just the beginning.
Every day, in funeral homes, new widows are born,
new orphans. They sit with their hands folded,
trying to decide about this new life. ...</i></blockquote>


This poem in particular spoke to me, how she captures so much meaning in just a few lines.
<blockquote>LABOR DAY
<i>It’s a year exactly since my father died.
Last year was hot. At the funeral, people talked
about the weather.
How hot it was for September. How unseasonable.
This year, it’s cold.
There’s just us now, the immediate family.
In the flower beds,
shreds of bronze, of copper.
Out front, my sister’s daughter rides her bicycle the way she did last year,
up and down the sidewalk. What she wants is
to make time pass.
While to the rest of us
a whole lifetime is nothing.
One day, you’re a blond boy with a tooth missing;
the next, an old man gasping for air.
It comes to nothing, really, hardly
a moment on earth.
Not a sentence, but a breath, a caesura.</i></blockquote>




Gluck is pretty upfront about her morose predilections:

(Both from CELESTIAL MUSIC)

<blockquote><i>I’m always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality.</i></blockquote>



and this passage made me laugh

<blockquote><i>I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god,
she thinks someone listens in heaven.</i></blockquote>

I knew of Louise Glück as a poet, but had never read anything by her. So when I saw that Farrar, Straus & Giroux were releasing a new edition of Ararat, I decided to jump in. This is a deeply personal collection of poems and it is almost uncomfortable to gain such a deep insight into Glück's family. There is also something comforting about it, however. Thanks to Farrar, Straus & Giroux and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this collection in exchange for an honest review.

I've always found that poetry is quite personal. Not only do poets put a lot of themselves into their poetry, whether on purpose or accidentally, but it also has to resonate on a personal level with the reader. There are a lot of poets whose craft I can admire, while being left absolutely cold by their poetry itself. For me, Wordsworth is one of those poets. I can see the ideas behind "I wandered lonely as a cloud" but it doesn't connect. Coleridge, on the other hand, his once close colleague, digs into themes and ideas which I do connect with and so his poetry is the kind I enjoy going back to. I also recently discovered Mary Oliver for myself and I find her combination between a love for nature and humanity and an awareness of the darkness inherent in both stunning. Trying a new poet is always tricky, because of this need for a personal connection. With Louise Glück I initially wasn't sure it would happen, in part because so much of herself is in this collection. Ararat is something of a self-reflection exercise for her and it is then up to the reader to figure out if they find aspects of themself reflected there as well. Initially I didn't, until, about halfway through the collection, the different threads she was playing with came together into a clearer fabric for me and I began to see her family's patterns reflecting some of my own.

In Ararat, Glück explores the dynamics of her own family, centred around the (then) recent death of her father. No one, including Glück herself, is spared by her poetry, which probes deeply into her identity as the oldest daughter, her parents' relationship with each other and their own siblings, and those of her child and their cousins. At times, this deep insight is, as I mentioned above, uncomfortable. It almost feels like peeking into their windows, except that you can also hear their conversations and see tensions between them. And yet there is also something comforting about it. As Tolstoy said, all unhappy families are different and yet, within that unhappiness there is room for connection. While each family has their own dynamics, the kind of unearthing which happens in Ararat provides a language for doing the same with one's own family. As a child of complicated parents, you will find the perfect mix between self-sacrifice, anger, and yearning here.

Ararat is a very personal collection of poems about family dynamics and time passing. Glück plays with the small details and the large, weaving patterns across generations, and wondering if they can ever be broken.

This book was beautiful to read!! I immediately fell in love with the writing and language. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience great writing.

Reading Ararat felt like standing in front of a mirror that shows more than just your reflection, it shows your memories, your pain, your family, and everything in between. Louise Glück writes in a very raw and honest way.

This collection really digs deep into the idea of family, not the perfect version we often see, but the real one. It’s about love, grief, anger, distance, and the silence that sometimes grows between people who are supposed to be close. I related to the emotions even if my experiences were different. Glück makes you reflect on your own life without even realizing it.

Her language is simple but powerful. There’s no fancy decoration in her writing, yet the weight of her words hits HARD.

This is not an easy collection, but it’s one that leaves a mark. If you’ve ever struggled with complicated family relationships or grief, Ararat will feel like a quiet conversation you didn’t know you needed.

I'm new to Louise Glück and was very excited to review this collection, but sadly it wasn't for me. As an exploration of grief and loss, it comes across as one-nite, grey-tinged, and a little repetitive. As a poetry editor for a literary journal, I come across a lot of poems that tend to navel gaze to the point where the line between poetry and personal diary entry is blurred. Perhaps I am just not the target audience for this particle form of poetry. But it was hard not to skim read the whole thing.

A true depiction on familial grief, this cuts like a knife.
I felt the distance between Glück and her father through her poems about childhood and as her father came to the end of his life, but also the love they shared and the care they tried to show each other despite the way they tried to keep to each other's own lives.
The poems about her mother's parenting and relationship with her daughter's were well written and dreary. How does a mother love through grief? How does a mother feign happiness to her children?
Bittersweet and tearful, I recommend!

I came to this new edition of Glück's 1990 book as a sceptic. Until now my only experience with Glück's work was The Wild Iris with its talking flowers and saccharine spirituality which wasn't to my taste. I was proved wrong! I found Ararat's deadpan delivery of intricately crafted lines, dripping with malice and irony, both empowering and heartbreaking. I raced through this book and then reread it. I will also admit that this book had me returning to my old copy of The Wild Iris and reading it in a different light.

I can see now why Ararat would be chosen for a reissue. Yes, the New York Review of Books quote used in the blurb "the myth of a happy family" might entice a young, contemporary reader to Glück's work, but that quote isn't even the half of it. What makes this book stand out for me is not the subject matter but the craft - lines that are (on the whole) syntactically complete, colloquial language and pared back titles that started to look to me like bullet holes chillingly quivering in the Contents page.

Thanks to FSG for this early copy of a book that I otherwise would probably have overlooked. My more detailed review may be found on my YouTube channel.

I just adore Glück! This book is no exception. I’ll be revisiting this book over and over for life. Incredible!

An incredible collection of poetry. It really shows the pain that can be carried into adulthood from one’s childhood. The poems were so lovely and really make you stop and have a different perspective on how you felt as a child. It felt like poems made precisely for empaths.

Gluck always makes life feel slower, in a good way. The feelings she elicits may incline to a sobering depression, but she always manages to makes the feeling of empowerment outlast. She was truly one of the greats.

This is a beautiful compilation of poems about life, humanity, death throughout a the author's life. This is a quick but impactful read and has me thinking about it days later. I plan to read much more from this author.

The language is so beautiful but this is so sad. Every one of these poems is gorgeous and personal. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

“Ararat,” a new edition of Louise Gluck’s work of poetry was deeply personal, sorrowful, and mesmerizing. It explores the complexities of family dynamics, particularly her own family, but as a reader, the themes feel timeless and connected if you have experienced complicated family dynamics. Her writing is striking- with religious and natural world undertones, and a conciseness to the language that matches overall tone of the collection.

It is haunting and beautiful and speaks to the masterful way in which Louise Gluck was able to shape her craft. Thank you to Net Galley and Fararr, Straus, and Giroux for this ARC!

a beautiful collection of poems dealing with family, grief and loneliness. this was hard to read at times because it’s so personal and so direct for poetry, in the best possible way. you really wouldn’t think these poems were originally published over a hundred years ago, they almost feel timeless in how they deal with emotions that are so integral to humanity. what i love most about louise glück is how accessible yet powerful and ripe with imagery her poetry is, and this is no exception!

Louise Glück writes grief and longing so well. This poetry collection is sad but also very strong. I will be going back for a reread once this comes out.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a copy of this ARC.

Reading Louise Glück's poems, I dealt with a deep sense of sorrow. The family dynamics in her poetry cannot not touch you. The poetic voice seems to have a rather distanced stance, and has an almost resigned tone. Thus I, as a reader, felt as a spectator seeing the unfolding story of a family that has to deal with the hardships of life. I could relate to this poetic voice and see in myself that acceptance of the things that are inescapable and fleeting. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to experience such beautiful verse! I will definitely re-read it.