Rhymes With "Click"

       If you had bet big money on Louise Gluck to win the Nobel Prize in Literature this year, you would be pretty rich right now. (You would also be a very rare sort of gambler.)

     Gluck (sounds like "brick") is an American poet who has been publishing to acclaim for half a century. As NPR put it, "No one is more literary establishment than Louise Gluck." Perhaps, only three years after receiving a lot of tweedy criticism for giving Bob Dylan the prize, the Nobel judges wanted to select a winner that would cause no controversy in the academy. 

     Gluck's work often plays with themes and images of nature, trauma, desire -- a fallen world. She doesn't waste much time being obscure. This short poem, "Early December in Croton-on-Hudson," gives a taste of her style:

     Spiked sun. The Hudson’s

     Whittled down by ice.

     I hear the bone dice

     Of blown gravel clicking. Bone-

     pale, the recent snow

     Fastens like fur to the river.

     Standstill. We were leaving to deliver

     Christmas presents when the tire blew

     Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared

     Down by a storm stood, limbs bared . . .

     I want you.

      If you'd like to hear the admirably direct Louise Gluck read a little of her own work, the video below is for you.