Louise Glück : le poème à l’épreuve

Abstract

This paper analyses the latest evolution in Louise Gliick's poetry, from Ararat to The Wild Iris, together with some important essays on contemporary poetry and creation at large, recently published in Proofs & Theories. The title, « Le poème à l'épreuve », plays on the French double -entendre of « A Poem about an ordeal » and « The Poem as Proof ». The author analyses the successive poetic transcriptions of painful loss, from pathetic adequation to analytical distance, then to a Stevensian attempt at finding some proof in the world of things ; and finally on to an ironical exercise in contingency - where a fallacious poetic adhesion to loss enables the poet to finally play with proofs.