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· The following version of this poem was used to create this lesson plan: Glück, Louise. “Mock Orange by Louise Glück.” Poetry Foundation.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49601/mock-orange.

· Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

· The poem opens with an unnamed speaker addressing an unnamed “you” (1).

· It is night and the speaker cannot sleep.

· The speaker says that “it is not the moon” (1), but the mock orange flowers in her garden which keep her up.

· In the second stanza, the speaker continues to discuss the flowers, which she says she hates in the same way she hates sex.

· She discusses “the man’s mouth/ sealing [her] mouth, the man’s/ paralyzing body” (6-8).

· She refers to the post-coital “cry that always escapes” (9) as “the low, humiliating premise of union” (10-11).

· In the...

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