Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Tuesday, April 26, 2022.

Today's poem is by Louise Gluck, a American poet and essayist who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature.

She was born on April 22nd of 1943, so her birthday was just a few days ago. So it seems only right to share a poem by her.

She's won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award,

the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Bollinger Prize. She was also the Pulitzer of the United States.

All of that to go along with that Nobel Prize. So you can see that she's one

of the most revered and most notable American writers of the last 100 years. The poem that I'm

going to read today is called Averno. It's pretty long. So I'm not going to be able to offer

any comments. If it's too long, you know what, feel free to just,

I don't know, turn this podcast off. But this was originally published in the May 2005 issue

of Poetry Magazine and then was published in one of her collections as well. Now, what I want to say

is that this poem begins, it's five parts, but it begins with this before part one.

Averno.

Ancient name Averness, a small crater lake 10 miles west of Naples, Italy, regarded by the ancient

Romans as the entrance to the underworld.

One. You die when your spirit dies.

Otherwise you live.

You may not do a good job of it, but you go on,

something you have no choice about.

When I tell this to my children, they pay no attention.

The old people, they think.

"'This is what they always do.

...