The Drowned Children by Louise Glück
"The Drowned Children" is a poignant poem by Louise Glück found in her collection "The Descending Figure." The poem presents a reflective narrative centered around children who have tragically drowned after falling through the ice of a pond. The speaker adopts a detached tone as they describe the serene yet somber scene, emphasizing the innocence and vulnerability of the children, who are portrayed as lacking judgment in their playful exploration. Imagery of the ice and the children’s wool scarves evokes an ethereal quality, suggesting both the allure and danger of the water.
Additionally, the poem explores themes of early mortality, as the speaker contemplates the children's brief lives and their purity represented through symbols like light and good cloth. The children are depicted as blissfully unaware, engaging with their environment in a way that invites both nostalgia and sorrow. Ultimately, the poem concludes with a haunting call for the children to "come home," juxtaposed with the reality of their loss, encapsulating a deep sense of grief and longing in the face of tragedy. This work invites readers to reflect on the fragility of childhood and the poignant interplay of life and death.
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The Drowned Children by Louise Glück
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1980 (collected in The Descending Figure, 1980)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
In “The Drowned Children,” from The Descending Figure, an onlooker comments on children who have fallen through the ice of a pond and drowned. With the cool detachment of the ice cracking, this speaker addresses the reader directly, describing how the children “have no judgment. So it is natural that they should drown.” The “ice taking them in” and “their wool scarves floating behind them as they sink” convey the experiences of the children being swallowed by the water. Nevertheless, the pond lifts the children “in its manifold arms,” keeping them buoyant at least temporarily.
The speaker determines that “death must come to them differently, so close to the beginning,” as though not much time had elapsed since the children had been “blind and weightless,” like babies. The images of “the lamp, the good white cloth that covered the table, their bodies” symbolize the light, warmth, and purity associated with children.
By describing how the children “hear the names they used like lures slipping over the pond,” Glück refers to the children hearing their names called by their parents or calling one another’s names on a day that demands nothing more than the simple pleasure of fishing. The voice at the end of the poem which asks what the children are waiting for and beckons them to “come home, come home” is silenced in an image of the children “lost in the waters, blue and permanent.”
Bibliography
Diehl, Joanne Feit, ed. On Louise Glück: Change What You See. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Dodd, Elizabeth. “Louise Glück: The Ardent Understatement of Postconfessional Classicism.” In The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet: H. D., Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Glück. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992.
Harrison, DeSales. The End of the Mind: The Edge of the Intelligible in Hardy, Stevens, Larkin, Plath, and Glück. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Upton, Lee. Defensive Measures: The Poetry of Niedecker, Bishop, Glück, and Carson. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2005.
Upton, Lee. “Fleshless Voices: Louise Glück’s Rituals of Abjection and Oblivion.” In The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five American Poets. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1998.