Like Dolls with Their Heads Cut Off

Laura Quinney

  • October by Louise Glück
    Sarabande, 32 pp, US $8.95, April 2004, ISBN 1 932511 00 8

Louise Glück, the poet laureate of the United States for 2003-2004, belongs to the line of American poets who value fierce lyric compression. This tradition was established by Emily Dickinson and her followers: H.D., Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Bishop. It is a tradition predominantly, though not exclusively, of women poets; the opposing tradition of ornate or discursive amplitude has been predominantly male (Whitman, Crane, Pound, Eliot, Ginsberg). Wariness and rigour characterise this genus of poetry by American women. Dark, incisive and severe, it treats every species of indulgence with mistrust, from rhetorical excess to wilful illusion.

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Vol. 27 No. 14 · 21 July 2005 » Laura Quinney » Like Dolls with Their Heads Cut Off (print version)
Pages 32-33 | 3157 words