The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“… even a good man was more deadly than the worst of bears…”

— Lauren Groff / The Vaster Wilds

“Glück’s death marks a line break, but not a full stop, to a timeless voice in the art of poetry. It’s a voice that resonates with the wonder and grief of ancients like Sappho and moderns like Dickinson—in other words, like Louise Glück.”

— Srikanth Reddy / “In Remembrance of Louise Glück” / The Paris Review

“For what woman has not, walking in the dark of the street or along a path deep in the countryside, sensed the brutal imaginings of a man watching her from his hidden place, and felt the same chills chasing over her skin, and quickened her steps to get away?” 

— Lauren Groff / The Vaster Wilds

“You’re not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity …
… You see again how far away each thing is from every other thing.”

— Louise Glück / “Telescope”

“To be alone and surviving is not the same as being alive, she understood. And if she could in fact rouse herself to healing, if she could chase away the vulture of death, she would not choose this life that was shown to her, though the beauties of the world were without limit and the grace given to encounter more of them would have been an astonishing gift. Though there was satisfaction in the work of her body and her hands, though mere survival was a triumph, she understood now that the long loneliness of such a life she would never choose for herself.”

— Lauren Groff / The Vaster Wilds

“Concerning death, one might observe
that those with authority to speak remain silent”

— Louise Glück / “Bats”

“It is a moral failure to miss the profound beauty of the world…”

— Lauren Groff / The Vaster Wilds

What I’m Listening To:

“I can dig it, he can dig it, she can dig it, we can dig it

They can dig it, you can dig it, oh, let’s dig it, come on, dig it for me, baby?”

— Friends of Distinction / “Grazing in the Grass”