Curiosity 51: Poets Anastasia Vassos and Louise Glück

First, a poem by my friend Anastasia Vassos, whom I see monthly in a little poetry group; six of us, we first met in a workshop three years ago with master poet Mark Doty. Ann shared this poem with us before it found its way to recent publication in the Orchards Poetry Journal. It's beautiful.

Elegy in Flannel and Cotton

Louise Elisabeth Glück (1943–2023)

The poets are dying.
The bone ladder falls to dust—
escapes memory.

Once, when G & I drove up the coast
to Bangor, time forgot
its forward step. & there—

I wanted to make the moon
remain. The eye polishing
the night, astonished.

Now stars bloom myopic.
Nothing to be done.
We grow threadbare.

& I, still dressed
in flannel & cotton, drowsy
from last night's tumbled sleep

read old words, those rivers
of ice whose work it is
to carry the crates of the dead.

And since Ann's poem was created in memory of Louise Glück, who died this last October 13 at age 80 (and who happened to be the officemate at Yale of another of our group, Carol Tell), here's a poem by Glück (chosen very randomly—mainly, I guess, because December is in the title, and it's short).

Early December in Croton-on-Hudson 

Spiked sun. The Hudson’s
Whittled down by ice.
I hear the bone dice
Of blown gravel clicking. Bone-
pale, the recent snow
Fastens like fur to the river.
Standstill. We were leaving to deliver
Christmas presents when the tire blew
Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared
Down by a storm stood, limbs bared . . .
I want you.

I am so glad I've stumbled my way into poetry. It certainly does feed the soul.