A Fantasy by Louise Glück
"A Fantasy" by Louise Glück is a poignant poem that explores themes of grief, loss, and the complex emotions surrounding mourning. The title conveys a dual meaning, referring both to the common belief that funerals offer closure and to the yearning for a return to a time before a loved one’s death. The poem opens with a stark acknowledgment of mortality, emphasizing the reality that death is an everyday occurrence. It portrays the disorientation of those left behind, particularly "new widows" and "new orphans," who grapple with their changed lives and the expectations of how to cope with their grief.
Throughout the poem, the speaker reflects on the societal rituals of mourning, highlighting the widow's struggle between her outward expressions of gratitude and her inward desire for solitude and a return to her past. The depiction of the post-funeral reception reveals an ironic contrast between the presence of supportive visitors and the widow's longing for peace and privacy. Ultimately, the poem captures the tension between the façade of coping with loss and the deep, often unspoken desire to rewind time, underscoring the complexities of navigating life after a significant loss.
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A Fantasy by Louise Glück
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1990 (collected in Ararat, 1990)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
The title of this poem has a double meaning: the fantasy that a funeral can provide closure to grief plus the fantasy of moving backward to a time before the death of a loved one.
To set a tone to demystify death and destroy the illusion of mortality, the speaker begins the poem in a straightforward manner: “I’ll tell you something: every day people are dying. And that’s just the beginning.” The “new widows” and “new orphans” who are born “sit with their hands folded,” as if trying to stay calm in the midst of chaos, “trying to decide about this new life.”
This state of disorientation and indecision continues as the mourners are described as “frightened of crying, sometimes of not crying.” Someone has to “lean over” and tell them “what to do next.” At the reception, the house is ironically described as “suddenly full of visitors,” with the widow receiving the respects that the other mourners pay to her and bravely finding “something to say to everybody.” She “thanks them, thanks them for coming,” while secretly wanting them to leave so that she can go back to a previous time and place, to the cemetery, the “sickroom,” and the hospital, traveling back in time “just a little, not so far as the marriage, the first kiss.” This implies that the widow does not necessarily long for the marriage but a time when she did not have to decide what to do next with her life.
Bibliography
Diehl, Joanne Feit, ed. On Louise Glück: Change What You See. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Dodd, Elizabeth. “Louise Glück: The Ardent Understatement of Postconfessional Classicism.” In The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet: H. D., Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Glück. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992.
Harrison, DeSales. The End of the Mind: The Edge of the Intelligible in Hardy, Stevens, Larkin, Plath, and Glück. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Upton, Lee. Defensive Measures: The Poetry of Niedecker, Bishop, Glück, and Carson. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2005.
Upton, Lee. “Fleshless Voices: Louise Glück’s Rituals of Abjection and Oblivion.” In The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five American Poets. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1998.