• Review Archives
  • Caribbean Literary + Cultural Blogroll
  • Story Sundays
  • Charting Children’s Literature
  • Reading Challenges & Projects
  • Review Policy + Contact Form

Novel Niche: A Place for Books

~ Ruminations, reviews and recipes all cooked in a literary cauldron: al(most always) book reviews, all the time.

Novel Niche: A Place for Books

Tag Archives: All Hallows

“All Hallows” – Louise Glück

19 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by Shivanee @ Novel Niche in Other Kinds of Men

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

A Speculative Poetry Reader, All Hallows, Louise Glück, Other Kinds of Men

4092081230_aa845d0981_b

Image: Muertos_1989, posted at Flickr by Omar Bárcena under a Creative Commons License.

Who sits with you at the table for supper? Whose hand, when you are weary, lifts the soup spoon to your mouth?

Louise Glück’s “All Hallows”: it doesn’t get more sublime, or more terrifying. If you know your horror, you’ll know it’s the speculative unfurling that steals your sleep, far more than the manic clown’s face dripping with blood. The blood in this poem is hidden: it sits under the skin, patient and clever as any ghost biding its time. Glück’s pastoral gothic, which brings us darkening hills, fields picked-clean, oxen sleeping in their blue yoke, is an anticipation. Let’s think about that quality of a poem when it’s picked clean. It makes me muse on how sparely Jean Rhys furnished the narrative rooms of Wide Sargasso Sea and her other works, because every word had to matter, had to be relied on to count. You could read “All Hallows” the same way: it not only draws in with an emotive anticipation, it gathers tension like the dropping of superfluous sheaves.

The poem is notched, mounting in a slow, arid expectancy “as the toothed moon rises”. You don’t know what to expect, waiting with it. You find that the poem makes you complicit in the act of an unsettled spectatorship. “This is the barrenness / of harvest or pestilence”, says the omniscient narrator, so we don’t expect a bountiful gathering. This is no scene with Hallowe’en pumpkins, bursting golden with the rewards of a rich harvest. This All Hallows sees the wife, beckoning the soul out of the tree, her “her hand extended, as in payment, / and the seeds / distinct, gold, calling / Come here / Come here, little one“.

When picked this clean, the very bones of the poem gleam, currency for the boatman. Who are you calling down from the tree?

Read “All Hallows” here.
Louise Glück’s most recent collection of poems, Faithful and Virtuous Night, was published in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

bon voyage.jpgThis is the nineteenth installment of Other Kinds of Men, a speculative poetry reader in honour of Ursula K. Le Guin. Speculative writing, which encompasses the major genres of mythology, fantasy and science fiction, has often given voice to the most relentless and ungovernable urgencies of this age, and any other. Le Guin understood this: that to write about dragons, ice worlds and other seeming oddities was, in fact, to write into the messy, riotous complexity of ourselves. Here’s to dragons, and here’s to Ursula.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Sheaves upon sheaves of novel musings straight to your mail!

Join 332 other followers

Novel Niche is Social!

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Goodreads

The Eternal TBR

Popular Perusals

  • "Birdshooting Season" - Olive Senior
    "Birdshooting Season" - Olive Senior
  • "My God, It's Full of Stars" - Tracy K. Smith
    "My God, It's Full of Stars" - Tracy K. Smith
  • "All Hallows" - Louise Glück
    "All Hallows" - Louise Glück
  • Caribbean Literary + Cultural Blogroll
    Caribbean Literary + Cultural Blogroll
  • A Week in Walcott • "The Spoiler's Return"
    A Week in Walcott • "The Spoiler's Return"
  • Review Archives
    Review Archives
  • "Di Great Insohreckshan" - Linton Kwesi Johnson
    "Di Great Insohreckshan" - Linton Kwesi Johnson
  • "Rope / Tongue" - No'u Revilla
    "Rope / Tongue" - No'u Revilla
  • Duane Allicock's Thoughts on The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng
    Duane Allicock's Thoughts on The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng
  • "Nina" - Roger Bonair-Agard
    "Nina" - Roger Bonair-Agard

Currently Reading

Just Finished…

What S/H/(W)e Said

  • Revolutionary Mothering in Novel Niche - PM Press on Guest Review: Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Lines
  • Almah LaVon Rice-Faina on Guest Review: Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Lines
  • thecornocopiaallotment on “All Hallows” – Louise Glück
  • Shivanee @ Novel Niche on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • “Mirror, Reflect Our Unknown Selves” – Tlotlo Tsamaase | Novel Niche: A Place for Books on “Daphne” – Roberto Rodriguez-Estrada
  • Shivanee @ Novel Niche on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “Can You Speak English?” – Natalie Wee
  • Steve @poetrykoan on “La Brea” – Andre Bagoo

Twitter Updates

  • A reminder to me: it's not because of my social anxiety (real) or my innate desire to live in the woods with silenc… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 12 hours ago
  • What allyuh feel? 14 hours ago
  • No, fam, doh keep mih application! The application, an engagement with the present, does not allow itself no-holds-… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 14 hours ago
  • Parsing a recent rejection, which says - helpfully? nicely? - that it will keep my application on file, should furt… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 14 hours ago
  • @sarahcorbett70 @heineplath @IanHumphWriter @Sarahcorbett @NineArchesPress @PoetrySociety @McrPoetryLib Over the mo… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 18 hours ago

New at Novel Niche

  • Dearly Departed: A Conversation with Anu Lakhan
  • “The Whistler” – A Mary Oliver Primer
  • “The Fish” – A Mary Oliver Primer
  • “Wild Geese” – A Mary Oliver Primer
  • “How to Fix a Dancer When it Breaks” – Genevieve DeGuzman

Categories

  • A Week in Walcott (7)
  • Bookends (24)
    • Author Interviews and Features (3)
    • Bocas Lit Fest (5)
    • Guest Blogs (2)
    • Literary Events (1)
    • Literary Letters (1)
    • Novel Gift Exchanges (4)
    • Reading Ruminations (2)
    • Yourself In Books (2)
  • Charting Children's Literature (4)
  • Give Feral Thanks – A Mary Oliver Primer (3)
  • Guest Reviews (6)
  • Here for the Unicorn Blood (29)
  • Miscellanities (1)
  • NetGalley (2)
  • Other Kinds of Men (26)
  • Puncheon and Vetiver (31)
  • Reading Challenges (11)
    • British Book Challenge 2011 (4)
    • Caribbean Writers Challenge 2011 (5)
  • Requested Reviews (4)
  • Reviews 2010 (9)
  • Reviews 2011 (16)
  • Reviews 2012 (17)
  • Reviews 2013 (3)
  • Reviews 2014 (3)
  • Reviews 2016 (1)
  • Story by Story Reading (1)
  • Story Sundays (14)
  • Trinidad Guardian Sunday Arts Section (8)

Archives

Novel Niche's Eighth Anniversary!April 23, 2018

Tagnificent!

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth Alexandra Fuller Andre Bagoo A Queer POC Poetry Reader A Speculative Poetry Reader A Week in Walcott Bocas Lit Fest 2012 Bocas Lit Fest 2013 Brandon O'Brien British Book Challenge 2011 Caribbean Writers Challenge 2011 Carol Shields Catherynne M. Valente Charting Children's Literature Chatto & Windus Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Chronicle Books Cormac McCarthy Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné Derek Walcott Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight Feature/Interview Fiction Fruit of the Lemon Give Feral Thanks Gregory Maguire Guest Review Half of a Yellow Sun HarperCollins Here for the Unicorn Blood Is Just a Movie Jason McIntyre K. Jared Hosein Karen Lord Lisa Allen-Agostini Littletown Secrets Loretta Collins Klobah Mary Oliver Memoir Midnight in Your Arms Monique Roffey Morgan Kelly NaPoWriMo NetGalley Non-Fiction Novel Novel Gifts Olive Senior Other Kinds of Men Peepal Tree Press Picador Poetry Potbake Productions Puncheon and Vetiver Rajiv Mohabir Reading Ruminations Requested Review Review Rosamond S. King Shani Mootoo Shara McCallum Sherman Alexie Short Story Collection Simon & Schuster Sonia Farmer Stephen King Story Sunday The Allen Prize for Young Writers The Road Trinidad Guardian Sunday Arts Section Unless Vintage/Anchor Books Vintage Books Xiaolu Guo Yourself in Books

Header, divider and button images created by Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné.

Creative Commons License
This work by Shivanee Ramlochan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
    %d bloggers like this: