Neutrality In Louise Gluck's Early Darkness

Imagine a world without light or dark, good or evil, love and hate, one cannot understand the contrast of extremes, but only neutrality. Louise Gluck, an American poet, shows the feelings one might attain in a relationship, that with an inevitable loss and “uncompromising ideals” (Upton). Early darkness focuses on the distance and despair that God feels for humans, it uses many negatively connotated words describing his emotions, “impatient” over these extreme “obstacle[s]”; leaving readers wondering “whether pain is God’s “gift to make [us]/conscious in [our] need of [him]” (Allen). Contrastingly “Portrait” focuses on the relationship between a loving mother and a child that is so innocent she can not understand the full meaning of love.