Louise Glück의 시 "Early December in Croton-on-Hudson"

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오늘(12/12/2025) 뉴욕 타임즈에 실린 A.O. Scott의 "I Think This Poem Is Kind of Into You

"는 Lousie Glück이 이십대에 발표한 시 "Early December in Croton-on-Hudson"에 대한 '시 읽기' 에세이다.

 

Early December in Croton-on-Hudson

By Louise Glück

 

 

Spiked sun. The Hudson's

Whittled down by ice.

I hear the bone dice

of blown gravel clicking. Bone-

pale, the recent snow

Fastens like fur to the river.

Standstill. We were leaving to deliver

Christmas presents when the tire blew

Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared

Down by a storm stood, limbs bared ...

I want you.

 

 

아래는 (사진과 함께) 위 에세이에서

 

Yes, there is beauty in this landscape: the austere charisma of the Northeast in winter, with its desolate roads and frozen waterways.

 

The language is beautiful in a similar way. We’re greeted by a squall of sharp, repeated sounds that sting like snowflakes on the skin before they melt.

 

Here, for example, Glück assembles fragments of experience that imply — but also obscure — a larger narrative. It’s almost as if a short story, or even a novel, had been smashed like a glass Christmas ornament, leaving the reader to infer the sphere from the shards.

 

We know there was a couple with a flat tire, and that a year later at least one of them still has feelings for the other. It’s hard not to wonder if they’re still together, or where they were going with those Christmas presents.

 

To some extent, those questions can be addressed with the help of biographical clues. 

T he version of "Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” that appeared in The Atlantic in 1967 was dedicated to Charles Hertz, a Columbia University graduate student who was Glück’s first husband. They divorced a few years later.

 

“The precariousness of intimate speech,” Glück said in her Nobel lecture, “adds to its power and the power of the reader.”

 

 

 

Louise Glück in 1975. Gerard Malanga