SOURCE: Keller, Lynn. “‘Free / of Blossom and Subterfuge’: Louise Glück and the Language of Renunciation.” In World, Self, Poem: Essays on Contemporary Poetry from the “Jubilation Poets,” edited by Leonard M. Trawick, pp. 120–29. Kent State University Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Keller studies the themes of female sexuality and femininity in Firstborn, The House on Marshland, Descending Figure, and The Triumph of Achilles.

It is a commonplace of American feminist criticism that, historically, linkage of the words woman and poet has yielded a powerful contradiction in terms, inevitably confronted by women attempting verse.¹ Because those aspiring to the male status of poet have been caught in a conflict with their own female identity, as Gilbert and Gubar observe, “at its most painful the history of women's poetry is a story of struggle against … self-loathing” (xxiii). The poetry of Louise Glück testifies that being a woman continues...