Glück engages readers of Meadowlands, her seventh book of poems, by crafting a tight collection of accessible poems featuring candid conversations, provocative commentaries, opposing perspectives, sobering parables and poignant vignettes drawn from her own life as well as guest appearances by Homer's Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. These unsectioned poems are uniformly neat, short, stylistically similar and best appreciated as a series since the veiled references and deeper implications regarding Glück's own marriage in poems like "Circe's Torment" and "Parable of the Swans" can't help but rise to the surface when paired alongside poems like "The Dream" and "Meadowlands (1, 2, 3),” which show Glück's marriage and family life on the brink of collapse. The drawback to Meadowlands is that despite well timed infusions of levity readers end up on a distressing modern odyssey of sorts—a ride too often weighed down by moments of private suffering made public. Unfortunately, it’s a ride many of us 1.) are all too familiar with, and 2.) prefer to avoid, especially during playtime.
Sadly, the tagline for Meadowlands may as well be “Much misery, not enough light.” A sense of dark hopelessness and stark admonitions pervade the collection; for example, in "Midnight:"
If I were you
I'd think ahead. After fifteen years,
his voice could be getting tired; some night
if you don't answer, someone else will (26).