Louise Glück's "Poems 1962-2020" teachers' review for NSW HSC 2027-2028

Brief description and distinctive features

Seven poems from this anthology are set for study in English Advanced: Critical study of literature for the new Stage 6 English syllabus for 2027 and 2028: 

‘The Wild Iris’, ‘Nostos’, ‘Vita Nova’, ‘Youth’, ‘Mitosis’, ‘Harvest’, ‘The Village Life’ 

Teaching these poems cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

The poet

American poet and writer Louise Glück, (1943-2023) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020. The judges said it was “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”. Glück composed twelve poetry collections and she was Poet Laureate of the United States in 2003.  Other awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities medal, the National Book Critics Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Bollingen Prize.  She wrote poems at an early age and struggled with anorexia. She benefited from psycho analysis (“I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist,” (‘The Untrustworthy Speaker’ p216).  She was an adjunct professor at Yale University.  In her teaching she mentored, supported and challenged other writers and poets. One of her students Lucy Silbaugh said in 2020:

“Louise takes teaching very seriously and never, ever praises idly; if a poem is terrible, she will tell you it is terrible. But she also takes genuine delight in a good line; she seems to really want to be thrilled and surprised by her students’ work.”

What distinguishes Critical study of literature from the other focus areas?

• “Critical” means to make a judgment and that moves students from annotation and analysis to a genuine and intelligent consideration of different perspectives and ideas that can then be used to enhance and enrich student responses.
• Students should be encouraged to feel confident in the judgment they make especially if those judgments are substantiated by critical reading 
• Students need to consider how “understanding” and “appreciation” differ, and that “appreciation” will grow as students read widely about Glück and her poems. 
• Students need to keep focus on these three aspects: distinctive qualities, meaning and value for each poem and for the suite of poems. 
• The length and accessibility of the poems enable students (to) explore how the author’s ideas are expressed in the text by analysing its construction, content and language.
• Critical and repeated reading and responding to all the set poems is essential
• Critical study of the poems should involve an extensive exploration and interpretation of the ways Louise Glück portrays people, ideas, settings and situations in the poems
• Students need to be encouraged to develop personal and intellectual connections with the poems 
• The HSC question on Critical Study may specifically prescribe any of the seven poems so students need to study all the poems 
• Critical Study is the mainstay of our subject English; and these poems can also inspire students in their own Craft of Writing imaginative, discursive and persuasive styles.

Brief description of Louise Glück: Poems 1962-2020

Louise Glück acknowledged the impact of a wonderful teacher in her dedication to her first collection of poetry.  Her twelve collections of poems reflect that she tried to distinguish each collection from the previous one, avoiding previous strengths for new views and demands on her poetic skills. The set poems are drawn from only six collections beginning with the title poem in The Wild Iris in 1992, then ‘Nostos’ from Meadowlands (1996), the title poem from Vita Nova (1999) and ‘Youth’, then Mitosis from The Seven Ages (2001) and the title poem from A Village Life (2009) with ‘Harvest’. Advanced students would benefit from reading widely beyond the set poems, especially in the collections from which those poems were drawn, which can be found in Louise Glück Poems 1962-2020 published in 2022. They would also benefit from reading the speech at the Nobel Prize presentation to her at  https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2020/ceremony-speech/ and her own speech of acceptance at https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2020/gluck/lecture/

Distinctive features of Louise Glück: Poems 1962-2020

• A striking poetic versatility in many forms including dramatic monologue, autobiographical and from diverse viewpoints including first, second and third person 
• Tonal changes from meditative to exuberant, serious and precise to austere and abstracted
• There is a frankness and wisdom about using poetry to make sense of experiences and an acknowledgement of the brevity of fame, (as she said in an interview in 2012 “I want to live after I die, in that ancient way, and there will be no knowing until that happens- no matter how many blue ribbons I have attached to my corpse”). 
• Her poems reflect stillness and slow time and sometimes a detachment, framed by her motif of windows to suggest a distance from the world   
• Her concerns ranged widely from those of childhood, through relationships, mortality, myth and old age and the complexities of being human 
• Glück said she was drawn to poems that invite a “listener or reader [to make] an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator” so it is no surprise that her own poems also invite that response.

Ways into teaching Louise Glück: Poems 1962-2020 in the HSC classroom

Teaching this text cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

For students reading a poem

• Trust your own insights 
• Expect the unexpected in a poem: something unusual, different, out of place
• You are unlikely to understand everything in one reading
• Be sure to hear the poem or read it aloud: follow the punctuation 
• What does the title say to you before you have read the poem? 
• What is happening in the poem? 
• What does the poet think about this experience and what does she want to share with us?

Literary Context:

The following quotation from Professor Anders Olsson delivering the presentation speech for the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, beautifully captures the influences on the poetic work of Louise Glück. 

‘Aside from the world of classical myth, Glück’s principal literary reservoir is the rich heritage of English-language poetry. It can be what she has called the “inward listening” in John Keats, the solitary, demanding voice of Emily Dickinson, or the tone of urgency in TS Eliot.’ 

Some ideas for exploring ‘Wild Iris’ in the classroom 

Visual representation: Bring irises to class if possible, or place images of them around the room. Try to find one that reflects “a great fountain, deep blue / shadows on azure seawater.” Place students in groups and ask them to listen to Maria Popova read the poem (the poet is not necessarily the best person to listen to when reading her poetry). 

Listen to it again and read it out aloud in the classroom. 

Research: Ask students to research the life cycle of an iris e.g. “Irises, whether grown from bulbs or rhizomes, are perennial plants, meaning they live for multiple years, typically returning for several consecutive growing seasons. They go dormant during winter and then return with new growth in the spring, often flowering in the spring and summer.”  An AI response. 

Context: Provide some background on where this poem sits in the complete works. e.g. The Wild Iris was the name of Glück’s 6th poetry collection published in 1992 and is also the title of the first poem in that collection. The collection is set in a garden with different voices and monologues and conversations between a god, a gardener-poet and flowering plants and trees. 

Form: Ask students to consider what form is being used e.g. The title poem is a dramatic monologue as the iris calls on the human gardener/poet to listen to its story of coming back from the dead after a burial in the dark earth. 

Language: Ask students to comment on the language the poet has selected and to consider the senses used by the poet and if they can discern any references to Greek mythology and the underworld. 

‘Wild Iris’ opens the collection with a starling statement and persona.

“At the end of my suffering 
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death 
I remember.”

The opening is arresting and compelling. The iris has been trapped underground and welcomes a change at the end of its agony.   The recollections of its former life by the plant is specific and precise but “Then nothing”. There is no easy comfort early in the poem which records the slide of all things towards death but there is relief and exuberance and then joy in the final stanzas as a voice and beauty stand forth, like the iris, in our lives. 

What words do they associate with youth? How would they describes themselves and their lives? What does each group consider to be the issues that really matter to their generation. Ask each group to report to the class on their discussions. 

Now consider Glück’s poem called ‘Youth’, written in 2001 in the poetry collection, The Seven Ages. The poem recalls her youth and growing up in the 1950s in a family with: 

“…a terrifying familial will 
that implied opposition to change, to variation, 
a refusal even to ask questions—” 

Listen to the poem read by the poet and then read the poem aloud in your groups. I tried and failed to find a recitation by an actor.

‘Youth’ appears in 2001. The title is plain and clear and the opening stanza in the live recording invokes laughter from the student audience at Arizona University.  They must be students of English who prefer novels to mathematics. 

Group discussion: After listening to the poem being read and re-reading it aloud themselves ask each group to consider 

• What were the issues for Glück and her sister, the young people in this poem? 
• How was family life for them? 
• What challenges did they face? 
• What memories remain of their lives and how are they represented? 
• What happens when they become adults and look back at their lives?

Language use: We can understand our emotional response to a poem, how it makes us feel , through considering the deliberate language choices made by the poet. In ‘Youth’ the poet makes use of repetition and  alliteration. The precision of her language choice such as  ‘still lives’ ‘sad sounds’ ‘the remarks we made were like lines in a play’ have a clarity and a concern about family life and the lives of the young people in that family. Don't forget the punctuation too — the em-dash Gluck uses in the sixth stanza has a force all of its own. 

Concluding stanza: The final stanza of the poem turns the poem on its head after the —, as the poet takes the reader back to adulthood as the past “…that world begins/ to shift and eddy around us…” What do we discover about ourselves and our memories as one world vanishes and the present supplants the past? 

Table time

In groups discuss and decide what could be said about each poem under the following  headings. 

HSC style questions for Louise Glück: Poems 1962-2020

1. ‘Reading a good poem by Louise Glück is like taking a slap to the face in a large, cold bathroom. Resonant, if not always enjoyable’ Mattew Buckley
   
   How does this statement reflect your assessment of Glück’s poetry? Make detailed reference at least two poems.
   
   
2. “American poet Louise Glück, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020. The judges said it was for ‘her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal’”. 
   
   To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? Support your point of view with specific references to at least three poems. 

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English Stage 6 HSC syllabus

There are requirements for particular types of texts to be selected from the prescribed texts list for different courses. Great care must be taken in selecting a pathway of texts that meets all the requirements.

For the Advanced course

Four prescribed texts to be studied with at least ONE from each of the following categories (prose fiction, poetry, and drama OR nonfiction OR film OR media) and ONE authored by Shakespeare.

The pathway below includes a drama text by Shakespeare which can be found in all sections of the course except Texts and Human Experiences. 

The lack of Shakespeare in Texts and Human Experiences has a significant effect on the pathway once you choose Glück.

Possible pathway for HSC Advanced English course