Liberation My mind is clouded, I cannot hunt anymore. I la… - Louise Glück

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Liberation

My mind is clouded,
I cannot hunt anymore.
I lay my gun over the tracks of the rabbit.

It was as though I became that creature
who could not decide
whether to flee or be still
and so was trapped in the pursuer's eyes-

And for the first time I knew
those eyes have to be blank
because it is impossible
to kill and question at the same time.

Then the shutter snapped,
the rabbit went free. He flew
through the empty forest

that part of me
that was the victim.
Only victims have a destiny.

And the hunter, who believed
whatever struggles
begs to be torn apart:

that part is paralyzed.

Louise Glück

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About Louise Glück

Louise Elisabeth Glück (April 22, 1943 – October 13, 2023) was an American poet and essayist. From 2003 to 2004, she was Poet Laureate of the United States. She had won many major literary awards in the United States, including the National Humanities Medal, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize, among others. In 2020, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."

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Also Known As

Native Name: Louise Elisabeth Glück

Alternative Names: Louise Gluck

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Anne Sexton Denise Levertov Mary Oliver Anne Carson Anna Akhmatova

Additional quotes by Louise Glück

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface. It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Look at us, she said. We are all of us in this room
still waiting to be transformed. This is why we search for love.
We search for it all of our lives,
even after we find it.

Living things don't all require
light in the same degree. Some of us
make our own light: a silver leaf
like a path no one can use, a shallow
lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.
You and the others who think
you live for truth and, by extension, love
all that is cold.

Liberation My mind is clouded, I cannot hunt anymore. I lay my gun over the tracks of the rabbit. It was as though I became that creature who could… - Louise Glück

About Louise Glück

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