Some reading for all you poets (1.25.22)

Two books of interest for you practitioners and readers of poetry:

Louise Glück, Winter Recipes from the Collective (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 45 pages).  and Joe Moshenska, Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton (Basic).

Glück's book, reviewed in the NYT by Elisa Gabbert, is a welcome slim volume of 45 pages (though only 15 poems), which attracts me immediately because it's not 145 pages, as so many books of poems must be these days.  But more interesting, and worth exploring sometime in our Wednesdays@One salon, is what Gabbert admits about herself as a reader of poetry:

Glück’s intensity repelled me when I first encountered her work, as a student . . .  At the time I was attracted to playfulness, irreverence, anti-poetry. Now that I’m older, have suffered more and realize my life is likely more than half over, it’s her seriousness, her coldness, that appeals. 

First, to acknowledge that your reading tastes change over time is a refreshing thing to read from a critic.  (Growing, becoming more complex as a reader, may be another matter.)  But you get the sense from this self-observation that the critic has swung maybe too far the other way?  Playfulness ought to continue to appeal, even as one gets older and crankier, if only to forestall the inevitable.

But my point here is that we all should ponder how our reading tastes and powers do change, not only as we read and write more, but as we are more read and written, that is, as we mature.  There are benefits to examining how we change, from time to time.  That's one reason to keep a steady journal of what we read and write, so we can revisit our old selves in all their literary glory.

As for Moshenska's "life" of Milton (apparently, he fictionalizes where biographical facts are scant, like throughout Milton's later life), I shall add the book to my "to read eventually" list, and hope that I get to it.  But maybe not before I re-visit Lycidas, Samson Agonistes, and the two Paradises.  Which is to say, not anytime soon.  Still, there is something for this 21st Century writer of poems to learn from England's No. 2, so I should make a plan for re-engaging.