The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Glück, Louise. “All Hallows.” The New Yorker (1972).

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

"All Hallows" is a free verse poem that opens Glück's second collection, The House on Marshland. The voices in this collection take on a variety of registers from mythic to mundane, articulating themes of liminality, mortality, and family dynamics. "All Hallows" introduces the interplay between a woman's intimate life and larger symbolic orders. This ushers the reader into a landscape defined by ambiguity and liminality, anchoring the poems that follow in a larger discussion of cycles, transformations, loss, costs, and offerings.

In the poem, the speaker paints a portrait of autumnal transition with images that combine natural rural elements with symbolic tension. In the second stanza, a wife leans out her window to offer golden seeds and call forth the soul of a "little one" (15). The poem ends with an unsettling apparition as a soul creeps out of a nearby tree.