Yesterday’s note on Louise Glück made me do some searching.
Her Nobel Lecture mentions a contest, conducted when she was 5 or 6, to declare the greatest poem in the world. It made me think — against her warnings — about which poem of hers I’d claim to like best.
I think it’s “Parable of the Swans.”
The male believes love is a feeling in the heart. The female believes love is what you do. After 10 years, they hit a patch of slimy water.
Sooner or later in a long
life together, every couple encounters
some emergency like this, some
drama which results
in harm. This
occurs for a reason: to test
love and to demand
fresh articulation of its complex terms.
If you are lucky enough to have had a long life together with someone, I’d guess you’d like this poem.
• Source: The poem is here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49615/parable-of-the-swans
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