Ellen Bryant Voigt on Louise Glück ("Brooding Likeness")

Close Readings

The last of three episodes in our cluster on Louise Glück: one of her oldest and dearest friends, the marvelous poet Ellen Bryant Voigt joins the podcast to talk about Louise's poem "Brooding Likeness."

Ellen's books of poetry have recently been assembled into a staggering single volume, Collected Poems (Norton, 2023). She is also the author of two books of prose: The Flexible Lyric (Georgia, 1999) and The Art of Syntax (Graywolf, 2009).

A couple notes on things that come up in the episode:

Ellen discusses Louise's autobiographical note for the Nobel Prize. You can find that autobiographical piece here.

We listen, during the episode, to a recording of Louise reading "Brooding Likeness." The recording contains an alternate phrase in its penultimate line, and during the episode Ellen and I surmise that it was an earlier version of the poem than the one that appeared in The Triumph of Achilles.

I've since been able to confirm that. The poem first appeared (with the penultimate line as she reads it here) in The New Yorker on April 12, 1981. The reading we listen to happened on October 22, 1981. The book version, with the version of the line we both prefer, wouldn't be published until 1985.

I hope these three episodes on Glück will add something to the beautiful array of memories that have appeared in writing since her passing. I think the guests speak to each other, even as I talk to them one on one, and they do so through their mutual devotion to the poetry of their friend.

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