A Village Life
Louise Glück
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
<P>A Village Life, Louise Gl&#252;ck's eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place:</P><P><I> </I></P><P><I>All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.</I></P><P><I>Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Trees&#8212;</I></P><P><I>The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;</I></P><P><I>on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.</I></P><P><I>&#8212;from "tributaries"</I></P><P> </P><P>Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountain's opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed. <BR>Gl&#252;ck has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as "the type of describing, supervising intelligence found...</BR></P>