Now Playing: Handel, Concerto Grosso No. 4 in A minor, Op. 6/4, HWV 322, "Larghetto - Affetuoso."

I've been reading a lot of poetry this week, trying to knock some books off the list that people keep recommending. Jay Hopler's Green Squall, Seamus Heaney's North, and Elizabeth Bishop's Geography III were more or less new to me, but now I'm revisiting Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris. Although Gluck is by now so famous as to be almost a cliche among young writers, every time I read her books I'm struck again by the incredible pacing she displays in her lines' rhythms and her use of line breaks. Also, her imagery. In this one, for example, I love the last two lines for the way they capture physical and metaphysical together.

Vespers

I don't wonder where you are anymore.
You're in the garden; you're where John is,
in the dirt, abstracted, holding his green trowel.
This is how he gardens: fifteen minutes of intense effort,
fifteen minutes of ecstatic contemplation. Sometimes
I work beside him, doing the shade chores,
weeding, thinning the lettuces; sometimes I watch
from the porch near the upper garden until twilight makes
lamps of the first lilies: all this time,
peace never leaves him. But it rushes through me,
not as sustenance the flower holds
but like bright like through the bare tree.