I don't have much to say about this poem by Louise Glück, except that it's really nice to read, earthy and full of great atmosphere and great sounds.
Glück is one of her generation's (my parent's generation) most honored poets, a Bollingen Prize winner, Pulitzer Prize winner, Academy of American Poets Award, US Poet Laureate and any number of other things in the last twenty years. But this poem goes back farther than all that, 1967, before the awards, before the adulation of the academic world. It's smart, unpretentious and deep, and its music is quiet but hard, hiding a little bit of truth, maybe even something profound.
COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.
- Louise Glück
Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.
Glück is one of her generation's (my parent's generation) most honored poets, a Bollingen Prize winner, Pulitzer Prize winner, Academy of American Poets Award, US Poet Laureate and any number of other things in the last twenty years. But this poem goes back farther than all that, 1967, before the awards, before the adulation of the academic world. It's smart, unpretentious and deep, and its music is quiet but hard, hiding a little bit of truth, maybe even something profound.
COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.
- Louise Glück
Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.
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