SOURCE: "Assembling a Landscape: The Poetry of Louise Glück," in The Hollins Critic, Vol. XIX, No. 4, October, 1982, pp. 1-13.

In this essay, Miklitsch charts the course of Glück's work over her first three volumes of poetry. By analyzing representative poems from each volume, the critic discusses the strengths and weaknesses he perceives in the poet's work. Miklitsch also declares that Descending Figure transcends the despair of the earlier two books by means of its technical sensibility.

Louise Glück is familiar to readers of contemporary American poetry. As early as her debut appearance in Paul Carroll's Young American Poets (1968), her work intimated a poet of consequence. There was something about the obvious technical facility and self-lacerating tone that was immediately engaging, not to say arresting. Her first book, Firstborn, initially published in the United States by the New American Library in 1968, substantiated that impression. In a...