Manyebook

Triumph of Achilles

From the opening line ("It is not the moon, I tell you") Gluck claims absolute control of subject, craft, and perception. We see what we are instructed to see; we understand what Gluck insists we understand. Gluck's sensitivity to emotional nuance is extreme: "I ask you, how much beauty/ can a person bear? It is/ heavier than ugliness, even the burden/ of emptiness is nothing beside it." Her genius lies in her passionate restraint, a mingling of plain and elevated diction, a reliance on indirection and understatement. Resolution and revelation arise from the stately balance of poems which demand order from anarchy: "Why love what you will lose?/ There is nothing else to love." Gluck is foremost among her generation of poets and no collection should be without all four of her full-length books. — Rhoda Yerburgh, English Dept., Vermont Coll., Montpelier

Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. (from Library Journal)

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 72
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780880010825
  • Settings
  • United States of America
  • Genres
  • poetry, classics, literature, american
  • Release date
  • 1987