Nature and Humanity
In Glück's collection The Wild Iris, the voices of a human speaker and those of plants are given equal weight. The poems entitled "Matins" and "Vespers" are told from the perspective of a gardener-poet, who often engages with the natural world. For example, the gardener-poet compares God to a foxglove flower in "Matins" (#3), and studies a hawkweed in "Vespers" (#3). Likewise, the poems told from the perspective of a plant often address the gardener in particular and humans in general. This is seen when Lamium describes its growing conditions, stating, "This is how you live when you have a cold heart." And again, when Scilla tells the gardener, "You are all the same to us, / solitary, standing above us, planning / your silly lives." Nature and humanity are entwined in The Wild Iris.
Finding a Voice
Finding a voice is something Glück writes about often in her poetry. Her collections are often organized around a set of voices, which the poet Peter Streckfus has said are "held together by a set of social contexts," and in which "invariably, through the push and pull of opposite points of view, a kind of dialectic thought emerges." In other words, the quest to develop a poetic voice is about uncovering truth. The voices in Glück's poems are both unique and resonant, and she has become critically acclaimed as a result.
This idea is expressed in the titular poem "The Wild Iris" both literally and figuratively. The flower's cycle of death and rebirth is a metaphor for periods of time that Glück herself experienced in her own life when she couldn't write. The longest of these was two years, and this very collection (written in an intense outpour of just eight weeks) was the first to break that silent spell. The Wild Iris informs the reader that "whatever / returns from oblivion returns / to find a voice." This outlines the entire collection as an exercise in using one's voice to make meaning, whether the voice comes from a flower, a human, or a god.
Human Suffering
Suffering plays a central role in The Wild Iris. The collection alludes to the Garden of Eden and the Fall From Grace: the transition of humans from an innocent state to one of shame and disobedience. At times, the human speaker in the poems feels tormented, as in "Vespers" (# 1), because she cannot find a sure connection to God. At other times, the divine speaker observes the human suffering because they had to learn to navigate the earth and take ownership of their lives ("Retreating Light").
When the flower and plant speakers suffer, it illuminates truths about human suffering as well. For example, Witchgrass and Clover speak about the pain of being unwanted and targeted, which is something that also happens to humans. The Red Poppy claims to be mirroring humans in its speech, saying, "I speak / because I am shattered." Snowdrops describe the despair of surviving winter. In this collection, suffering is a natural part of life.
Light and Sight
The divine force that speaks in the poems embodies different forms, and some of them have to do with light. For example, titles of poems in this collection include "Clear Morning," "Love in Moonlight," "Early Darkness," "Retreating Light," and "Sunset." Light and sight are often interrelated in the poems in a spiritual context. In order for any image to be seen by the eye, light is a necessity. The notion of sight in these poems takes on a greater significance: that of clarity and understanding. For example, in "Clear Morning" (the first poem in which the deity speaks), the speaker says, "I cannot go on / restricting myself to images...// I am prepared now to force / clarity upon you."
Often, the spiritual understanding that takes place in these poems is tinged with violence. This is seen in "Spring Snow," where the divine speaker tells the poet-gardener that she can close her eyes now, because the deity has shown her what she wants: "not belief, but capitulation / to authority, which depends on violence." Later in the collection, the human speaker experiences peace as "bright light through bare trees." This startling image hints at violence because if a light is too bright, then it becomes blinding.
Blame and Betrayal
The notions of blame and betrayal that appear in The Wild Iris connect to the allegory of the Fall. In Chapter Three of Genesis, the first woman and man eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The pair lose their innocence, and God expels them from the garden. On earth, the ground has been cursed, and the humans must toil in order to live.
In The Wild Iris, the human speaker takes an active role in this biblical toil as a gardener, or one who cultivates plants. One of these plants, Witchgrass, expresses the way in which humans need something or someone to blame when they experience grief: "mourning and laying blame" always go together. It is the human speaker, however, who expresses a feeling of betrayal when she cannot locate a sign of or connection to God. In "Matins" (#6), the speaker asks, "What is my heart to you / that you must break it over and over...?" She asks God to alleviate her guilt and lift the stigma of isolation. Nearly every prayer poem in the collection deals with this wish to overcome blame, guilt, and betrayal.
Doorways
Glück has stated in interviews that during her two-year silent period, in which she could not write, she heard this line in her head: "At the end of my suffering / there was a door." At the time she did not know what to do with it, and it haunted her. But when the collection began to come together, these lines became the very first lines of "The Wild Iris." In this way, the notion of a doorway outlines the entire collection. Later in the collection, there is a poem called "The Doorway" in which the speaker wishes to stay "still as the world is never still," like a child hovering in a doorway. The speaker wishes to encapsulate a moment (specifically, the time of late spring) and remain in a particular state of being. But she cannot, as evidenced by the passage of time in the collection documented by poem titles ("Midsummer" appears directly after "The Doorway"). She cannot escape the experience of transformation and change that is first introduced in "The Wild Iris."
Seeking Connection
Every prayer poem in the collection is a gesture towards the desire for connection. This is the case even when the human speaker expresses disappointment or betrayal at the lack of reciprocity she feels from God. In the third "Matins," the speaker tells the deity that she cannot love what she can't conceive, and that the deity discloses "virtually nothing." Later on in the fifth "Matins," the speaker continues to search for a divine sign but opens to the possibility that she must continue her life without a sign. In "Sunset," the deity responds to the gardener-poet's plea for a response, saying, "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 gardener-poet must learn to see the divine in everything, and to create meaning through her own words (which is Glück's project with this collection as a whole).
