The Wild Iris

by Gluck, Louise

• ISBN13: 9780880013345
• ISBN10: 0880013346
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780063117648
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-28
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications
• More Book Details

Summary

This collection of stunningly beautiful poems encompasses the natural, human, and spiritual realms, and is bound together by the universal themes of time and mortality. With clarity and sureness of craft, Gluck's poetry questions, explores, and finally celebrates the ordeal of being alive.

Table of Contents

The Wild Iris	1	(2)
Matins	2	(1)
Matins	3	(1)
Trillium	4	(1)
Lamium	5	(1)
Snowdrops	6	(1)
Clear Morning	7	(2)
Spring Snow	9	(1)
End of Winter	10	(2)
Matins	12	(1)
Matins	13	(1)
Scilla	14	(1)
Retreating Wind	15	(1)
The Garden	16	(2)
The Hawthorn Tree	18	(1)
Love in Moonlight	19	(1)
April	20	(1)
Violets	21	(1)
Witchgrass	22	(2)
The Jacob's Ladder	24	(1)
Matins	25	(1)
Matins	26	(1)
Song	27	(1)
Field Flowers	28	(1)
The Red Poppy	29	(1)
Clover	30	(1)
Matins	31	(1)
Heaven and Earth	32	(1)
The Doorway	33	(1)
Midsummer	34	(2)
Vespers	36	(1)
Vespers	37	(1)
Vespers	38	(1)
Daisies	39	(1)
End of Summer	40	(2)
Vespers	42	(1)
Vespers	43	(1)
Vespers	44	(1)
Early Darkness	45	(1)
Harvest	46	(1)
The White Rose	47	(1)
Ipomoea	48	(1)
Presque Isle	49	(1)
Retreating Light	50	(2)
Vespers	52	(1)
Vespers: Parousia	53	(2)
Vespers	55	(1)
Vespers	56	(1)
Sunset	57	(1)
Lullaby	58	(1)
The Silver Lily	59	(1)
September Twilight	60	(2)
The Gold Lily	62	(1)
The White Lilies	63

Excerpts

The Wild Iris

At the end of my suffering

there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.

Then nothing. The weak sun

flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive

as consciousness

buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being

a soul and unable

to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth

bending a little. And what I took to be

birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever

returns from oblivion returns to find a voice:

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure seawater.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Wild Iris by Louise Gluck Copyright © 2003 by Louise Gluck
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.