Gluck has many voices within this book, The Wild Iris. There is the voice of the narrator, which is the most obvious, and there are presumably flowers talking, and also the voice of “God”. This leaves room for a lot of different perspectives on belief and spirituality. In “Snowdrops” on page 6, it reads, “I did not expect to survive, / earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect / to waken again.” This makes it obvious it is the grass or a flower talking, blooming again after a long winter. This is one voice, and the second I want to talk about is “God’s” voice. On page 15, the poem, “Retreating Wind” opens with, “When I made you, I loved you. / Now I pity you. / I gave you all you needed: bed of earth, blanket of blue air.” God made people, and now instead of loving, he pities our “small talking” souls. Gluck is giving a voice to God, which is a voice no one has ever heard before. Same with the voices of flowers—I know it’s something I’ve never seen in poetry before. These different kind of perspectives gives a surreal kind of feeling to the book, knowing that these voices are unique. Then, even with this voice of God, Gluck’s narration shows that she is having trouble believing in Him. “Once I believed in you,” she says on page 36, “I planted a fig tree… / It was a test: if the tree lived, / it would mean you existed. / By this logic, you do not exist.” I think this is an interesting quote in itself, because she is trying to use nature to prove God’s existence.
There is such a strong connection to nature in this collection, the biggest reason, obviously, is the title of the book. I decided to look up what the connotations of “Iris” are, and I found that Iris is a messenger of the Gods in Greek Mythology. This was a huge discovery for me, and suddenly, I understand the title much more. I take this to mean that nature is trying to speak to the higher powers, which is Gluck’s intention throughout this collection of poems. In “The Jacob’s Ladder”, a flower speaks, saying, “Trapped in the earth, / wouldn’t you too want to go to heaven?” It seems to me this flower can’t speak to God, just humans, because this flower “desire[s] / knowledge of paradise.”(24). Because we have a perspective of a flower and nature, it’s like we’re seeing three different levels in this collection: nature being the bottom level, or the base, humans are the middle, and God is the top level, presumably in heaven. Since nature is two levels away from God, it is trying its hardest to speak to the humans to get its message across.
I can’t figure out if Gluck wanted readers to think she was atheist, or a “believer”, let’s just call it. Because throughout the collection, Gluck is very much debating the existence of God, but then she has poems written in God’s voice. I’m not sure if she just wants the reader to come to his or her own conclusions, or maybe there really is some kind of method to her madness. The readers are left to their own opinion. But one thing is for sure, there is no mistaking the meaning behind Gluck’s poems. One thing that sets her apart from all the other poets we’ve read, is that the meaning is pretty much laid out for you. This is very much unlike Armantrout, which was the last poet we read. Gluck was a breath of fresh air.
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