The Gold Lily

Louise Glück 1992

Louise Glück’s “The Gold Lily” is the penultimate poem in Glück’s sixth book of poetry, The Wild Iris (1992), a volume for which Glück received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The Wild Iris is composed of poems partly inspired by Glück’s avocation as a gardener. Most often, there are three voices in The Wild Iris: those of flowers speaking to humans, humans speaking to God, and God speaking to humans. In “The Gold Lily,” the flower speaks to humans or, possibly, to God. As the gold lily dies, it asks to be saved by the one who raised it, but one who is helpless to fulfill the request.

At the same time the poem gives voice to a voiceless creature, a flower, it also, as an extended metaphor, gives voice to the human subject on the eve of death, a creature unavoidably wasting its voice pleading with a Being who cannot hear, does not listen, cannot help, or is not there at all. As such, the poem speaks to the inevitable in nature and to strength and weakness in the face of perhaps life’s greatest fear: death. In its own small way, “The Gold Lily” is a preparation for death, a poem attempting to confront one’s mortality and eternal end through tragic words shared with those who can hear and might listen: one’s readers and oneself.