“I am not that tree”: The Crucifix in Glück’s lyric poetry as the Tree of Revelation
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Course
The English Lyric (EN3V18002)
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
This argumentative essay focuses on the use of trees and wood in two of Glück's poems: "Afterword" and "Parable of the Dove". The mentioning of trees as well as sacrifice and suffering refers to the biblical story of Christ dying on the Cross. By means of recalling the Crucifix, Glück complicates...
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“I am not that tree”:
The Crucifix in Glück’s lyric poetry as the Tree of Revelation
With our current individualistic, globalised society as produced by twentieth-century
modernisation, traditional Christian structures based on the fundamental role of the divine on
earth are rapidly disappearing (Droogers 19-26). Consequently, the influence of Christianity
on literature tends to be characterised as one that is merely made up of historical traditions
void of embodied sensational experiences of the divine (Meyer and Stordalen 1). Yet,
twentieth- and twentieth-first-century poets are being inspired by devotional lyric poetry
which meant a new, intimate interaction with the mysteriousness of God by means of
suppressed, private voices (Hopler & Johnson 297-8; 377-8). This religious bond is also seen
in Louise Glück’s lyric poetry, which is criticised and reassessed by her use of religious
discourse and elements of nature (Morris 1-3).
Due to Glück’s past with anorexia nervosa, the topics of suffering have always been
central to her poetry: “she is willing to sacrifice anything with body and physicality for her
art” (Morris 57). The physical body and sacrifice together have religious connotations as well,
meaning the body of Jesus Christ on the wooden Cross. The crucifixion has been visualised in
numerous ways, but for centuries, it has been linked to the history of wood sculpture and to
salvation (Fozi & Lutz 10; Viladesau xi-xii). Recognisably, Glück alludes to the symbol of the
Cross in multiple poems by including imagery of a wooden structure that is the tree: “tree is
torment” (“Elms”). The tree highlights the material of which the Cross is made, namely wood,
which evokes the story of the crucifixion (Kitzinger 393). She then expresses the physical
body abstractly in the form of a personal, earthly voice which interacts with an abstract Christ
symbolised by the tree.
However, Glück’s poetry rarely constitutes of one personal voice. She captures the
plurality of voice in “Parable of the Dove” in simply one line by complicating the subject-
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