All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I was recently told that The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 went to Louise Glück, an American poet. I haven’t read much poetry before – my literary level is fairly undeveloped – but since I’d never heard of Glück before, I decided to look her up. The first of her writings I found was All Hallows, which I’ll share here:  

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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.

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The first time I read this poem, I was deeply moved. A profound sadness washed over me like a cloud and I felt like a part of me had just died. Without me knowing, tears started swelling up in my eyes – slowly at first, then quickly, like a dam bursting open. I very rarely cry over literature, but this was an unexpected exception.

The bizarre thing is that I barely understood the poem! I intuitively guessed that there was something special about the imagery of oxen, yoke and sheaves but if you asked me to explain what this poem meant, I couldn’t tell you. To this day, after re-reading it many times, it still feels like there is so much to unpack. And each time, a tremendous sense of emotion washes over me without fail.

This was the poem that illuminated the power of the written word in all its awesomeness. And one which has encouraged me to explore literacy on a deeper level.