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"In the Cafe"
By Louise GlückUpdated Tuesday, June 9, 2009, at 6:51 AM ETClick the arrow on the audio player to hear Louise Glück read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.
.
It's natural to be tired of earth.
When you've been dead this long, you'll probably be tired of heaven.
You do what you can do in a place
but after awhile you exhaust that place,
so you long for rescue.
My friend falls in love a little too easily.
Every year or so a new girl—
If they have children he doesn't mind—
he can fall in love with children also.
So the rest of us get sour and he stays the same,
full of adventure, always making new discoveries.
But he hates moving, so the women have to come from here, or near here.
Every month or so, we meet for coffee.
In summer, we'll walk around the meadow, sometimes as far as the mountain.
Even when he suffers, he's thriving, happy in his body.
It's partly the women, of course, but not that only.
He moves into their houses, learns to like the movies they like.
It's not an act—he really does learn,
the way someone goes to cooking school and learns to cook.
He sees everything with their eyes.
He becomes not what they are but what they could be
if they weren't trapped in their characters.
For him, this new self of his is liberating because it's invented—
he absorbs the fundamental needs in which their souls are rooted,
he experiences as his own the rituals and preferences these give rise to—
but as he lives with each woman, he inhabits each version of himself
fully, because it isn't compromised by the normal shame and anxiety.
When he leaves, the women are devastated.
Finally they met a man who answered all their needs—
there was nothing they couldn't tell him.
When they meet him now, he's a cipher—
the person they knew didn't exist anymore.
He came into existence when they met,
he vanished when it ended, when he walked away.
After a few years, they get over him.
They tell their new boyfriends how amazing it was,
like living with another woman, but without the spite, the envy,
and with a man's strength, a man's clarity of mind.
And the men tolerate this, they even smile.
They stroke the woman's hair—
they know this man doesn't exist; it's hard for them to feel competitive.
You couldn't ask, though, for a better friend,
a more subtle observer. When we talk, he's candid and open,
he's kept the intensity we all had when we were young.
He talks openly of fear, of the qualities he detests in himself.
And he's generous—he knows how I am just by looking.
If I'm frustrated or angry, he'll listen for hours,
not because he's forcing himself, because he's interested.
I guess that's how he is with the women.
But the friends he never leaves—
With them, he's trying to stand outside his life, to see it clearly—
Today he wants to sit; there's a lot to say,
too much for the meadow. He wants to be face to face,
talking to someone he's known forever.
He's on the verge of a new life.
His eyes glow, he isn't interested in the coffee.
Even though it's sunset, for him
the sun is rising again, and the fields are flushed with dawn light,
rose colored and tentative.
He's himself in these moments, not pieces of the women
he's slept with. He enters their lives as you enter a dream,
without volition, and he lives there as you live in a dream,
however long it lasts. And in the morning, you remember
nothing of the dream at all, nothing at all.
.
Louise Glück's new book, A Village Life, will appear this September. For Slate's poetry submission guidelines, click here.
Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.
Click here for an archive of discussions about poems with Robert Pinsky in "the Fray," Slate's reader forum. Gluck seems to write two kinds of books (this is going to be a gross over-simplification) -- ones that deal directly with her life experiences and ones that deal indirectly through the use of myth.
The Seven Ages appears to be the first kind, and A Village Life appears to be the second kind. My favorite book of hers (and the one that won the Pulitzer) is The Wild Iris (1992), a book of the second kind. The book is an examination of God and faith, but it's done in poems that assume the POV of either a flower, God, or a woman. Sounds weird, but it's great.
In Meadowlands (1996), she writes about the breakup of her marriage, but she does it through the Homeric characters of Penelope, Ulysses, and Circe. In Averno (2006), she discusses the conflicting pulls of a woman from her husband and mother through the characters of Persephone, Demeter, Hades.
Having just rest more of her New Yorker poems, it seems that another theme of A Village Life besides the aging of people and the earth concerns the perils of sexual love before one establishes an identity of one's own. She also seems to see the mountain as a source of vitality that other parts of the earth no longer have.
-- MaryAnn
(To reply, click here)
A few months ago, I chanced upon Glűck's The Seven Ages, the most interesting book of contemporary poetry I've read in some time. As might be inferred from the title, Glűck's subject was the human lifespan, roughly considered as a succession of roles, as in As You Like It.
It seemed to me that Glűck was not interested so much in writing poems in the usual sense as developing paradigms for human role-playing. The language was plain to the point of banality, but for me there was no difficulty in that because it was what was said that was important, not the way it was said.
The friend the narrator meets in "In the Cafe" could possibly be viewed as a Don Juan but the narrator does not view him that way. (Clearly the narrator is female.) He "falls in love a little too easily," that is, about once a year. He is not merely a Don Juan because
It's not an act—he really does learn,
the way someone goes to cooking school and learns to cook.
He sees everything with their eyes.
He becomes not what they are but what they could be
if they weren't trapped in their characters.
So even if the women do have their roles, they do not play them adequately because of a lack of imagination. By having a role, a woman defines a certain domain of possibilities within which she moves, but she may not be able actually to reach the boundary of the domain due to a lack of understanding of what it is. By living with a woman, the narrator's friend comes up with a new role for himself and thus solves the problem of tiredness.
At the same time "he inhabits each version of himself fully, because it isn't compromised by the normal shame and anxiety." So he is able to help the woman by expanding her ability to move within the limits of her domain. Apparently these women do not understand the limits of their roles because they fall into them, rather than choose them. The problem for the woman is that she does not respond to his presence by changing herself but simply remains dependent on his empathy. Once he leaves her she is devastated. Of course, the narrator's friend must leave because he is weary of the role. I see no indication that the narrator sees anything immoral in this except the statement that "he falls in love a little too easily."
The narrator tells us more than once that she sees him only as a friend. She understands and observes at first hand the qualities that make him attractive.
But the narrator remains unseduced. For him, her importance is that she allows him to venture outside role-playing entirely. In other words, the problem with role-playing is that there is always a time when you want to step outside your role, and the narrator provides it. This is itself a role, that of the Discoverer.
At the same time the narrator concedes that the Discoverer is one type of role player who is never trapped because of his openness to something new. The Discoverer is a role outside of all others and embracing them (pun intended).
I found "In the Cafe" interesting but not as good as the other poems I found in The Seven Ages. It is too wordy. Some of it is typeset as prose and some as verse. The prose sections ought to be integrated into the verse.
-- Bottomfish
(To reply, click here)
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Gluck seems to write two kinds of books (this is going to be a gross over-simplification) -- ones that deal directly with her life experiences and ones that deal indirectly through the use of myth.
The Seven Ages appears to be the first kind, and A Village Life appears to be the second kind. My favorite book of hers (and the one that won the Pulitzer) is The Wild Iris (1992), a book of the second kind. The book is an examination of God and faith, but it's done in poems that assume the POV of either a flower, God, or a woman. Sounds weird, but it's great.
In Meadowlands (1996), she writes about the breakup of her marriage, but she does it through the Homeric characters of Penelope, Ulysses, and Circe. In Averno (2006), she discusses the conflicting pulls of a woman from her husband and mother through the characters of Persephone, Demeter, Hades.
Having just rest more of her New Yorker poems, it seems that another theme of A Village Life besides the aging of people and the earth concerns the perils of sexual love before one establishes an identity of one's own. She also seems to see the mountain as a source of vitality that other parts of the earth no longer have.
-- MaryAnn
(To reply, click here)
A few months ago, I chanced upon Glűck's The Seven Ages, the most interesting book of contemporary poetry I've read in some time. As might be inferred from the title, Glűck's subject was the human lifespan, roughly considered as a succession of roles, as in As You Like It.
It seemed to me that Glűck was not interested so much in writing poems in the usual sense as developing paradigms for human role-playing. The language was plain to the point of banality, but for me there was no difficulty in that because it was what was said that was important, not the way it was said.
The friend the narrator meets in "In the Cafe" could possibly be viewed as a Don Juan but the narrator does not view him that way. (Clearly the narrator is female.) He "falls in love a little too easily," that is, about once a year. He is not merely a Don Juan because
It's not an act—he really does learn,
the way someone goes to cooking school and learns to cook.
He sees everything with their eyes.
He becomes not what they are but what they could be
if they weren't trapped in their characters.
So even if the women do have their roles, they do not play them adequately because of a lack of imagination. By having a role, a woman defines a certain domain of possibilities within which she moves, but she may not be able actually to reach the boundary of the domain due to a lack of understanding of what it is. By living with a woman, the narrator's friend comes up with a new role for himself and thus solves the problem of tiredness.
At the same time "he inhabits each version of himself fully, because it isn't compromised by the normal shame and anxiety." So he is able to help the woman by expanding her ability to move within the limits of her domain. Apparently these women do not understand the limits of their roles because they fall into them, rather than choose them. The problem for the woman is that she does not respond to his presence by changing herself but simply remains dependent on his empathy. Once he leaves her she is devastated. Of course, the narrator's friend must leave because he is weary of the role. I see no indication that the narrator sees anything immoral in this except the statement that "he falls in love a little too easily."
The narrator tells us more than once that she sees him only as a friend. She understands and observes at first hand the qualities that make him attractive.
But the narrator remains unseduced. For him, her importance is that she allows him to venture outside role-playing entirely. In other words, the problem with role-playing is that there is always a time when you want to step outside your role, and the narrator provides it. This is itself a role, that of the Discoverer.
At the same time the narrator concedes that the Discoverer is one type of role player who is never trapped because of his openness to something new. The Discoverer is a role outside of all others and embracing them (pun intended).
I found "In the Cafe" interesting but not as good as the other poems I found in The Seven Ages. It is too wordy. Some of it is typeset as prose and some as verse. The prose sections ought to be integrated into the verse.
-- Bottomfish
(To reply, click here)