The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Glück, Louise. “The Edge.” Firstborn (The New American Library, 1968).

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

Louise Glück is among the most well-known and influential American contemporary poets. Her critically acclaimed works have been honored with the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, a 1993 Pulitzer Prize, and a 2014 National Book Award, among others. Glück's poems concern deeply personal yet universal experiences, including love, grief, family, and disillusionment. For this reason, critics debate whether to classify Glück as a confessional poet. In general, readers should not conflate poets with a poem's speaker, but the degree of autobiography in Glück's poems is up for debate.

Throughout her career, Glück was celebrated for her precise and austere diction. "The Edge" reflects Glück's early preference for highly compressed poems, which suits the poem's condensed tension. The speaker describes how she silently submits to her husband's will for the sake of keeping her family together.