Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Brooding Likeness" by Louise Gluck delves into the symbol of the bull as an embodiment of "heaviness," "destructiveness," and "purposeful blindness." The poem explores a fundamental tension between commitment and agency, positing the bull as a representation of both an innate sense of destiny and the existential struggle against it.

Born "in the month of the bull," the speaker aligns themselves with the animal's attributes-descriptions that are intrinsically dualistic in nature. On the one hand, the "lowered, the destructive head" indicates aggression or even senseless fury. On the other hand, it also implies "purposeful blindness," a willful disregard for the world. The bull symbolizes the twin forces of action and inaction, of resistance and resignation. While the bull "doesn't look up," it "still senses the rejected world," conveying a conscious rejection of the environment around it, a form of denial perhaps but also a form of focused commitment.

The poem then contrasts the spectators' perception of the bull with its own internal dynamics. The "stadium, a well of dust" becomes a metaphor for the public sphere where judgments are passed and roles are ascribed. The spectators who "watch him looking down in the face of death" presume to understand commitment but are questioned by the speaker. What, indeed, do they know of it? They judge the bull's actions or inactions within the frame of their own limited human experiences, unable to grasp the full scope of the animal's existential condition.

The notion of "commitment" in the poem is multidimensional. The bull's "one controlled act of revenge" can be seen as an act of commitment to its nature, or perhaps to its destiny. Yet, there's an existential twist. While the bull is "always moving," it is "not of his own accord." In this, Gluck captures the tragedy and beauty of commitment as something that is both conscious and inevitable, bound by the strings of fate and character. The bull moves "through the black field like grit caught on a wheel, like shining freight," a line that encapsulates the tension between being an autonomous entity and a mere object in the cosmic scheme.

The poem speaks volumes about human existence too. We, like the bull, are subject to judgments, constricted by societal norms and yet governed by our innate tendencies. Our commitments, whether willed or unwilled, make us who we are. Gluck's "Brooding Likeness" serves as a thoughtful inquiry into the nature of existence and the role of commitment within it. It questions the boundaries between choice and fate, between action and inaction, ultimately leaving us to ponder the gravity of our own commitments in the grand tapestry of life.

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