Vita Nova
by Louise Glück
In the splitting up dream
we were fighting over who would keep
the dog,
Blizzard. You tell me
what that name means. He was
a cross between
something big and fluffy
and a dachshund. Does this have to be
the male and female
genitalia? Poor Blizzard,
why was he a dog? He barely touched
the hummus in his dogfood dish.
Then there was something else,
a sound. Like
gravel being moved. Or sand?
The sands of time? Then it was
Erica with her maracas,
like the sands of time
personified. Who will
explain this to
the dog? Blizzard,
Daddy needs you; Daddy’s heart is empty,
not because he’s leaving Mommy but because
the kind of love he wants Mommy
doesn’t have, Mommy’s
too ironic – Mommy wouldn’t do
the rhumba in the driveway. Or
is this wrong. Supposing
I’m the dog, as in
my child-self, unconsolable because
completely pre-verbal? With
anorexia! O Blizzard,
be a brave dog – this is
all material; you’ll wake up
in a different world,
you will eat again, you will grow up into a poet!
Life is very weird, no matter how it ends,
very filled with dreams. Never
will I forget your face, your frantic human eyes
swollen with tears.
I thought my life was over and my heart was broken.
Then I moved to Cambridge |
Discussion Questions
- What do the dog and its name, Blizzard, suggest? How does this work as a metaphor for the poem?
- Love is a very important emotional need in our lives, and in this poem, the two human characters appear to be incapable of meeting this need (giving and receiving) for each other. Think about ways in which you try to give and receive love, what happens when the love you offer is not accepted, and how these emotions work their way through the poem.
- The word, anorexia (and its placement in the poem) is significant. What is anorexia, and what power does it hold within the poem?
- The last two lines of the poem greatly differ from the rest of the poem in tone as suggested by the italics. What do you think the poet is suggesting here? What kind of change is taking place in the life of the speaker of the poem?
About Louise Glück
Louise Glück (b. 1943) has authored nine books of poetry. Her poems are often celebrated for their mastery and use of first-person personae, from an unnamed, divorced mother to figures from myth, fairy tale, history, and scripture. Glück's work has dealt with the tumult and aftermath of death and divorce, facing the death of a husband and father, the unraveling of a marriage, or the aftermath of rebuilding lives which become as stripped down as Glück's own language. Glück also published the nonfiction Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry.
After attending Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University, Gluck taught poetry at numerous colleges and universities. Her work has received the Pulitzer Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, among others. Other honors include the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the MIT Anniversary Medal, as well as Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. She served as Poet Laureate from 2003–2004. Glück taught at Williams College for nearly twenty years. She's currently Writer in Residence at Yale University and a long-time resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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