I went to see Louise Gluck at a poetry reading today. She read three poems from her new book Averno. It is so different when a poet reads her own poem out loud compared to you reading her poem. Her poetry is raw and evocative of a world removed from anything we know. It is contained, yet expansive. And readers and listeners alike bend to her command through the music in her words, rather than the words themselves. The whole room went hush...to a death-like silence. The reading was an experience of being lulled...to an awakening.