[In Descending Figure,] Glück has some of Sylvia Plath's willed immobility, but her rhythms are not spiky and hysterical like Plath's. Instead they are mesmeric, trancelike, almost posthumously gentle….

Glück is not at her best in expository verse, where her hieratic rhythms can begin to sound portentous. But the poem reveals the aesthetic of Glück's verse—or of part of it: the acquiring, by renunciation, of a self. Denying itself the possession of the sacred object, the soul finds identity. Acquiring an object means absorbing it into the soul and losing it from view; renouncing it, the soul keeps it in view forever, and is able to see it clearly, free of projection. The sacred object is exposed, its underlying body visible, its form known in the X-ray vision of desire, which by renunciation is enabled into perception. It is an aesthetic Emily Dickinson would...