SOURCE: Gregerson, Linda. “The Sower against Gardens.” Kenyon Review 23, no. 1 (winter 2001): 115–33.

In the following essay, Gregerson provides an in-depth analysis of the poems in The Wild Iris and Meadowlands, claiming that the two books are “two poles of a single project.”

Louise Glück is one of those enviable poets whose powers and distinction emerged early and were early recognized. Her work has been justly admired and justly influential, as only work of the very first order can be: work that is so impeccably itself that it alters the landscape in which others write while at the same time discouraging (and dooming) the ordinary homage of direct imitation. In 1992 Glück published a sixth book and in 1996 a seventh, which, in their sustained engagement with inherited fable and inherited form, in their simultaneously witty and deadly serious subversions, constitute a deepening so remarkable that it amounts to a...