Woman at Mirror by Gerard ter Borch 1652
Louise Glück (pronounced ɡlɪk) died October 13, 2023, at the age of 80. She was a highly praised and awarded American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Bollingen Prize. From 2003 to 2004, she was the Poet Laureate of the United States.
Despite all those awards, I will admit to not being very familiar with her poetry. I never heard her read in person and I don't have any of her books on my shelf. After her death, there were many posts online about her and copies or links to her poems and interviews.
The poem of hers that caught my attention is a short one titled "Crossroads." I read it as a love poem to the self, written at an advanced age when one is considering their own death.
I watched an interview with her and learned a lot more about her life and work which made the poem richer on my next reading.
“Crossroads,” originally published in her 2009 book A Village Life, so she was still 14 years from her death. maybe she was contemplating death. Maybe she had an illness. In the poem, she looks at her body - not uncommon as we age - but also at her soul. She says that " it is not the earth I will miss / it is you I will miss."
"Self love" sounds selfish. But so many people don't love themselves. Therapists deal with that every day.
Listen to her read the poem and look at it on the page. Then, consider writing a love poem to yourself. What is it that you love about yourself? What will you miss about yourself? Do you already miss something you once loved about yourself?
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