At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
When Louise Glück experienced a two-year writer's block, she heard these lines echoing in her head. They provided a sense of hope that her writer's block was not a well in which her capabilities would drown, but rather a tunnel she had to travel through. At the end of this tunnel would be a renewed ability to write. However, Glück has also expressed that hearing these lines over and over was somewhat torturous because she didn't know what to do with them. When she finally broke the two-year block by writing "The Wild Iris," these lines introduced not only one of her best-known poems, but the entire collection, which went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.
These lines provide a sense of hope and a certainty for eventual self-transformation as a result of suffering. When someone suffers from depression or because of a similar experience, it can be difficult to feel hopeful about the future. As the poems in The Wild Iris can be read in conversation with each other, these lines demonstrate that no matter how much the speakers suffer, there is a "door" waiting for them at the end of that suffering.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak...
Though the flower is addressing the gardener-poet, these lines demonstrate a universal human experience that the reader can relate to: the fear of not being able to express oneself. The Wild Iris is a nonhuman being, but this speaker provides (as do other nonhuman speakers in the collection) a profound insight into the human experience. The type of expression, or the "[speaking]," that the Wild Iris refers to applies to any way that humans choose to communicate or express themselves. In Glück's case (as expressed through the gardener-poet in the collection), this has to do with writing. The Wild Iris's experience of existing "as consciousness / buried in the dark earth" can be considered a metaphor for Glück's experience of writer's block. Though these particular contexts are relevant, the experience has universal resonance.
It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.
Here, Witchgrass distinguishes between the garden and "the real world," making clear the feeling of disdain for humans and their gardens. The "it" refers to flowers planted by the gardener-poet, whose death leads to the targeting of Witchgrass and other so-called weeds. This behavior on the part of humans is what inspires Witchgrass's contempt in the first place. As in "The Wild Iris" and many other poems told from the perspectives of plants in the collection, these lines in "Witchgrass" touch upon a common human vein of behavior: the pairing of mourning and laying blame. Witchgrass considers this behavior to be ignorant and abusive.
I don't need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
Witchgrass expresses a sentiment of contempt and independence in these lines. This not only creates a tension between Witchgrass and the gardener-poet, but also between Witchgrass and the flower speakers in the collection. Unlike these flowers, Witchgrass does not rely on human praise and cultivation for survival. This sentiment expressed throughout "Witchgrass" gives the plant a very distinct voice, which Glück is known for in her poetry.
Witchgrass alludes to having existed even before the Fall of the first humans. Witchgrass was "here, before / you ever planted a garden." This ancient presence grounds a sense of authority. Whether Glück intended this or not, these lines are also suggestive of indigenous peoples who inhabited the North American continent before European arrival.
You want to know how I spend my time?
I walk the front lawn, pretending
to be weeding.
The opening lines of this prayer poem have a self-mocking edge to them. The speaker describes a behavior that, without the contextual explanation provided in the lines that follow, is eccentric. Walking the "front lawn" makes this a public behavior. If someone is "pretending / to be weeding," then there is clearly a strong internal dilemma at play. The "you" in this address is the deity, but the use of second-person also involves the reader. Here, as in other prayer poems, the gardener-poet uses a casual, informal tone that evokes a sense of closeness between the speaker and the addressee. However, the conflict of this poem is that the gardener-poet is searching for a divine sign from God, which means that at this point in the collection, the relationship between them is not reciprocal.
Or was the point always
to continue without a sign?
After having spent the duration of the poem describing the way she is searching for a divine sign, the speaker opens up a new possibility for her search in the final lines of "Matins" (#5). Perhaps the sign she looks for is the lack of a sign itself—signaling the need for the gardener-poet to show up and participate in her own life without an externally-sourced sign. These lines can be placed in conversation with the voice of God in the poem "Sunset," which reads, "My tenderness / should be apparent to you / in the breeze of the summer evening / and in the words that become / your own response." In other words, the divine sign that the gardener-poet searches for can be found in the search (and in the formation of words and prayer) itself.
I don't wonder where you are anymore.
You're in the garden, you're where John is...
As in all the "Matins" and "Vespers" poems, the gardener-poet addresses the deity. In other prayer poems, the gardener-poet expresses the need for divine presence, but here, she seems to know exactly where the deity is. She does not say that the deity is "with us in the garden," but rather that the deity accompanies John. This keeps consistent the sense of separation and longing that the human speaker feels throughout the collection. The repetition of "you're" has a somewhat accusatory tone. Despite the lack of an outward conflict between the speaker and John, this passage (as well as lines that come later on) hint at an internal conflict in their relationship.
...all this time,
peace never leaves him. But it rushes through me,
not as sustenance the flower holds
but like bright light through the bare tree.
This passage uses vivid imagery to depict the different ways in which the speaker and John experience peace. For John, peace is steady and consistent, but for the gardener-poet, peace is intense and presumably brief. There is an interesting tension at work because peace is widely considered to have only positive connotations, but here it opens the question of conflict between the speaker and John. Not only do they not share the same experience of peace, but the way in which the speaker feels peace has a restless quality to it: "like bright light through the bare tree."
Throughout the collection, light is often used to represent the presence of God, so it makes sense that the speaker experiences peace "like bright light."
Then I realized you couldn't think
with any real boldness of passion;
you hadn't had your own lives yet,
your own tragedies.
Often in Glück's poetry, she uses straightforward language that readers can immediately understand and connect with. The voice of God (as shown in these lines) is no exception. The divine figure in this collection is a figure of authority that the speaker cannot always reach on a personal basis, but the language used by the deity still allows for a connection accessed through understanding.
Here, the deity realizes that humans could not take ownership of their lives because they had not truly experienced deep feelings ("boldness of passion"). Tragedy is presented as a progression in the natural course of life in the lines "you hadn't had your own lives yet, / your own tragedies." This connects back to the very first lines in the collection: "At the end of my suffering / there was a door." In order for humans to take ownership of their lives through creative acts, they must first go through their suffering and locate the door.
You will never know how deeply
it pleases me to see you sitting there
like independent beings,
to see you dreaming by the open window,
holding the pencils I gave you
until the summer morning disappears into writing.
As the creator of humans, the deity takes on paternalistic feelings towards them. Like a proud parent observing their grown child succeed in the world, the deity is pleased to see humans taking ownership of their lives by writing their own stories. However, the humans are not completely grown up and responsible just yet; they are only "like" independent beings. Still, by engaging in a creative act, the humans are taking steps toward sovereignty.
The last line of this passage is a beautiful description of how it feels to experience creative flow. The "summer morning disappears into writing" because the writer is so engrossed in their work that they enter a different state of consciousness. Time is experienced differently in this state.
