White over white, the moon rose over the birch tree.
    And in the crook, where the tree divides,
    leaves of the first daffodils, in moonlight
    soft greenish-silver.

    We have come too far together toward the end now
    to fear the end. These nights, I am no longer even certain
    I know what the end means. And you, who've been with a
        man --

    after the first cries,
    doesn't joy, like fear, make no sound?

from 'The Silver Lily'

Helen Vendler wrote in The New Republic: 'Louise Glück is a poet of strong
and haunting presence. Her poems, published in a series of memorable books
over the last twenty years, have achieved the unusual distinction of being
neither "confessional" nor "intellectual" in the usual senses of those
words, which are often thought to represent two camps in the life of
poetry'.

What a strange book The Wild Iris is, appearing in this
fin-de-siècle, written in the language of flowers. It is a lieder cycle,
with all the mournful cadences of that form. It wagers everything on the
poetic energy remaining in the old troubadour image of the spring, the
Biblical lilies of the field, natural resurrection.'