“All Hallows” by Louise Glück paints a scene of moonrise, oxen, and picked fields, evoking a sense of eerie transformation. It explores themes of seasonal shifts and metaphorical transformation seen during All Hallows’ Eve.
All Hallows by Louise Gluck
Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
Sleep in their blue yoke,
The fields having been
Picked clean, the sheaves
Bound evenly and piled at the roadside
Among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:
This is the barrenness
Of harvest or pestilence
And the wife leaning out the window
With her hand extended, as in payment,
And the seeds
Distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree.
About Louise Elisabeth Glück
Louise Elisabeth Glück (born April 22, 1943) is an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003. Louise was born in New York City of Hungarian Jewish heritage and grew up on Long Island. Her father, Daniel, an immigrant from Hungary, helped invent and market the X-Acto Knife. She graduated in 1961 from George W. Hewlett High School and went on to attend Sarah Lawrence College and later Columbia University; however, she did not graduate from either of them. Glück won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris. Her works often explore themes of transformation, including those seen in All Hallows.
Other books by Louise Gluck, may include affiliate links to Amazon:
The Wild Iris, 1993
Poems 1962-2012
NATURE POETS OF COMMON LITERATURE PERIOD, 2023
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