SOURCE: Raffel, Burton. “The Poetry of Louise Glück.” Literary Review 31, no. 3 (spring 1988): 261–73.

In the following review, Raffel discusses the poetry in Firstborn, The House on Marshland, Descending Figure, and The Triumph of Achilles, focusing on technique and structure.

Born in 1943, Louise Glück has published four volumes of poetry: Firstborn (1968), The House on Marshland (1975), Descending Figure (1980), and The Triumph of Achilles (1985). She has won prizes and awards; she is reasonably well-known. But the kind of acclaim I believe she deserves has not come to her. She is not yet quite the poet she is capable of being. In particular, her last book represents a severe falling off (though the Poetry Society of America gave it the 1985 Melville Cane Award and The National Book Critics Circle gave it its 1986 poetry prize: I do not pretend to infallibility). But the toughness, complexity and, at its best, quite incredible insight...