It would be incorrect to suggest that the republication of Ararat by
Farrar, Straus & Giroux has breathed new life into Glück's words thirty-five years on from its original 1990 publication. It would suggest that these words require a fresh vitality. This could not be further from the case. Rather, this republication masterfully provides the opportunity for a reminder as to why Glück is truly one of the greatest poets to bless the last century.

I am no stranger to the poetry of Louise Glück - she is actually one of my most read poets. Frankly, I believe it to be a miracle of divine proportions that my edition of her collected poems has not yet taken to disintegration.

It is for this reason that it is shocking (to myself if not to anyone else) that I have never read Ararat as a full collection. Yet recently, I had the opportunity to read it as a whole - as the collected piece of art that it was meant to be. There is power in each poem individually, this much is undebatable to my mind. However, being able to appreciate the body of work as a whole being provided me with fresh perspective on established poetry.

This collection follows themes of family, religion, and life’s ephemerality. Yet what I find to be most touching about these poems is the understanding with which these themes are addressed. Throughout the collection, Glück focuses on the lives of her relatives, often sad, often melancholic often angry - but Glück is not angry. Her tone is not vengeful or bitter but compassionate and perceptive. 

Throughout her work, Glück is restrained but profound - she does not seek to intellectualise emotions, or make their translation exclusive. She does not make complex that which can be said simply, or perhaps that which is innately simple. 

A most apt example of this is the final stanza of her poem ‘Parados’:

I was born to a vocation:

to bear witness

to the great mysteries.

Now that I’ve seen both

birth and death, I know

to the dark nature these

are proofs, not

mysteries-

Here, Glück starkly lays out the so-called mysteries of life being merely their proof of existence.

Another poem from the collection that is particularly moving is ‘Lost Love’. This is a poem that deals with death - the death of a baby specifically. Glück's containment within the realm of such a topic is admirable:

trying to change

first fate, then history.

These excerpts depict Glück's mastery of the power of restraint - she does not use ten words if two will suffice.

Glück has a precision to her work which feels incredibly well-versed, yet never practised. Glück has the incredible gift of imbuing her words with the freshness of novelty: they are striking and never laboured. As an actor trains to never sound rehearsed, each word is reads as if it is the first time it has ever been said. Despite this, each word holds a generational, shared weight, which results in a truly rare combination of intertextuality and ingenuity.

Other standouts from the collection for me where ‘The Untrustworthy Speaker’, ‘Saints’, ‘Snow’ and ‘First Memory’.

As a collection to republish, especially in the wake of Glück's own passing in the last few years, Aratat does hold a significance - not more so than before, but differently. I am not suggesting that the collection be read exclusively in this light, but rather, that in this way, Glück is providing a base of compassion and understanding for her own life retrospectively. The poems do not beg for attention, but they earn their reader's respect. Thus, Glück's own life and work are so revered that they subtly demand to be treated with the same humanity and empathy on which they were based.

As one of the great American poetic voices to emerge out of the twentieth century, Glück's work holds its own pride of place within the English-language literary canon. This is true in both thematic and technical practise. Her work, however, holds value beyond just that which is academically tangible. There is a measured rawness to her work which is both beautiful and incurable.

If there is one collection I would recommend to anyone, it would be Ararat.

If there is one poet that I always do recommend to everyone, it is Louise Glück.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for the ARC.

Ararat was an excellent poetry collection. The writing was beautiful but still approachable. I'd read more from this poet.

Gluck's poetry is always lovely and this collection was no exception. It was nice to read all together so soon after her passing

Beautiful, very personal collection of poems. Glück was able to paint such an uncomfortable family portrait in less than 70 pgs.

About love, life and loss... Family connections.

Full disclosure this was an Arc from Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Many thanks to them.

I love Louise Glück. Her poetry is so beautiful and soulful. When I was a kid, I used to really hate reading poetry and then I developed my brain and I acquired some taste. Nowadays, poetry is some of my favourite things to read. This particular collection was so lovely, definitely one that is worth rereading again and again. It’s about loss, and they hit so hard.

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.