Exodus or Exile: The Trope of "more life" in Louise Glück’s Poetry

Abstract

Exodus or Exile: The Trope of "more life" in Louise Glück’s Poetry What is life in poetry? One concept that is trying to answer this questions is a psycho-theological, messianic and vitalist category of “more life,” elaborated by the Polish scholar Agata Bielik-Robson on the basis of Harold Bloom’s theory of poetic incarnation. Bloom’s writings constitute a link between the Jewish messianic vitalism and the vitalist line of American poetry, in which I place Glück. An antithetical position of subjectivityagainst the orders of experience governed by law and necessity (nature and death), “more life” positions the poetic psyche in a precarious position as an excessive entity in-betweenthem. The article examines a trajectory of the positions that Glück’s poetic subjects takein relation to those orders in the context of the messianic promise of “more life.”