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Louise Glück. Photo: © Katherine Wolkoff.
This week at The Paris Review, we’re highlighting the work of Louise Glück, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Read on for her poems “The Denial of Death,” “A Night in Spring,” and “A Warm Day.”
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The Denial of Death By Louise Glück Issue no. 226, Fall 2018
I had left my passport at an inn we stayed at for a night or so whose name I couldn’t remember. This is how it began. The next hotel would not receive me. A beautiful hotel, in an orange grove, with a view of the sea. How casually you accepted the room that would have been ours, and, later, how merrily you stood on the balcony, pelting me with foil-wrapped chocolates. The next day you resumed the journey we would have taken together. The concierge procured an old blanket for me. By day, I sat outside the kitchen. By night, I spread my blanket among the orange trees. Every day was the same, except for the weather. After a time, the staff took pity on me. A busboy would bring me food from the evening meal, the odd potato or bit of lamb. Sometimes a postcard arrived. On the front, glossy landmarks and works of art. Once, a mountain covered in snow. After a month or so there was a postscript: X sends regards …
I had left my passport at an inn we stayed at for a night or so whose name I couldn’t remember. This is how it began. The next hotel would not receive me. A beautiful hotel, in an orange grove, with a view of the sea. How casually you accepted the room that would have been ours, and, later, how merrily you stood on the balcony, pelting me with foil-wrapped chocolates. The next day you resumed the journey we would have taken together.
The concierge procured an old blanket for me. By day, I sat outside the kitchen. By night, I spread my blanket among the orange trees. Every day was the same, except for the weather.
After a time, the staff took pity on me. A busboy would bring me food from the evening meal, the odd potato or bit of lamb. Sometimes a postcard arrived. On the front, glossy landmarks and works of art. Once, a mountain covered in snow. After a month or so there was a postscript: X sends regards …
A Night in Spring By Louise Glück Issue no. 183, Winter 2007
They told her she came out of a hole in her mother but really it’s impossible to believe something so delicate could come out of something so fat—her mother naked looks like a pig. She wants to think the children telling her were making fun of her ignorance; they think they can tell her anything because she doesn’t come from the country, where people know these things. She wants the subject to be finished, dead. It troubles her to picture this space in her mother’s body, releasing human beings now and again, hiding them, then dropping them into the world, but mostly just empty, like an empty room …
They told her she came out of a hole in her mother but really it’s impossible to believe something so delicate could come out of something so fat—her mother naked looks like a pig. She wants to think the children telling her were making fun of her ignorance; they think they can tell her anything because she doesn’t come from the country, where people know these things.
She wants the subject to be finished, dead. It troubles her to picture this space in her mother’s body, releasing human beings now and again, hiding them, then dropping them into the world, but mostly just empty, like an empty room …
A Warm Day By Louise Glück Issue no. 183, Winter 2007
Today the sun was shining so my neighbor washed her nightdresses in the river— she comes home with everything folded in a basket, beaming, as though her life had just been lengthened a decade. Cleanliness makes her happy— it says you can begin again, the old mistakes needn’t hold you back …
And to read more from the Paris Review archives, make sure to subscribe! In addition to four print issues per year, you’ll also receive complete digital access to our sixty-seven years’ worth of archives. Or, to celebrate the students and teachers in your life, why not gift our special subscription deal featuring a copy of Writers at Work around the World for 50% off?
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