The Mystery | Literary Criticism & Book Review

The Mystery Critical Overview

Louise Glück's work has been well received by critics since the outset of her career. Perhaps to her advantage and to her disadvantage, she has often been compared to such masters of confessional poetry as Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. While it may be flattering to be placed among this famous (or infamous) company, the trappings of the confessional genre can be as harmful as it is helpful to a writer's career. Poets who are labeled confessional are often criticized for too much self-exposure and too much relation about extremely personal matters. In her book The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet, critic Elizabeth Dodd says that "Like Plath and Sexton, [Glück] writes with angry bitterness about female sexual or romantic experience in a world where women remain primarily powerless." That may be the case for many of Glück's poems, but those in Vita Nova, including "The Mystery," describe...
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