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America's New Nobel Laureate

Yale poet Louise Gluck just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I'm no Gluck expert, but these are lines I like:


In the splitting up dream
we were fighting over who would keep
the dog,
Blizzard. You tell me
what that name means. He was
a cross between
something big and fluffy
and a dachshund. Does this have to be
the male and female
genitalia? Poor Blizzard,
why was he a dog? He barely touched
the hummus in his dogfood dish.
Then there was something else,
a sound. Like
gravel being moved. Or sand?


The speaker is addressing her ex-husband or ex-boyfriend. She is describing a dream. This involved a fight over ownership of a dog (a fictional dog) -- "Blizzard." The dog seems to represent the actual relationship; he is a cross between a big fluffy pelvic triangle and a penis ("a dachshund"). The dream grows stranger; there is untouched hummus in the dogfood dish. Then, from some other area of the house: a sound of sand moving?


I like the fury and the who-gives-a-fuck aura in Gluck's writing. ("You tell me what that name means.") I also like how effortlessly she captures the weirdness of a dream: "Poor Blizzard, why was he a dog?" "Gravel being moved.....Or sand?"


This is just an unblinking look at anger and helplessness and bewilderment--and it doesn't offer consolation. But it's weirdly consoling. It's the voice of someone you'd want to have lunch with. (Am I alone in that reaction?) Congratulations to Louise Gluck!

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