Half in love with easeful Death’: The Mythopoetics of Louise Glück’s AVERNO”

Abstract

This paper examines the poetry collection entitled Averno (2006) by the contemporary American poet Louise Gluck (1943) from different perspectives. Highlighting her contribution to American women’s poetry, the study focuses on her feminist, post-confessional poetry which manifests itself in her revisionist interpretation of the myth of Persephone, Demeter and Hades. By opting for the traditional myth of the abduction of Persephone by Pluto/Hades and the heroine’s divided existence between two worlds; namely the earth and the underworld, Gluck achieves many goals. On the one hand, she subverts the female-as-object paradigm, by giving voice to the traditionally helpless victim. Thus, the female writer challenges the patriarchal, interpretational framework of traditional myth. On the other hand, the poet reflects on her own disappointment with love by using the mask of myth, thus avoiding direct confessionalism. Furthermore, Gluck’s infatuation with death attracts her to Averno, the gateway to the underworld. She keeps oscillating between this troubled life on earth, and a possibly blissful oblivion in death. This causes her to move back and forth, hesitating, contemplating both realms, conflating past and present, and myth with contemporary reality. Consequently, her poetry collection, characterized by simple yet bitter, terse, occasionally violent language, is best read as a whole. Its individual poems present the reader with puzzling, contradictory scenarios, open to various interpretations. Herein lies the originality and complexity of Averno by Louise Gluck.