Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "Apple Trees," Louise Gluck weaves a narrative that intricately binds love, family, and the specter of loss. The poem spans multiple temporal landscapes: from the dream-like memory where the persona stands among apple trees, to the immediate present with her son's crib, and then to the inevitable future. Gluck navigates these terrains with poetic language that carries the weight of love's complexities, revealing how intimately connected they are.

"Your son presses against me / his small intelligent body," begins the poem, placing us immediately in the physical world of a mother-child relationship. The son's body is described as "small" yet "intelligent," capturing the paradox of infancy: a being so vulnerable, yet teeming with potential and innate wisdom.

The apple trees serve as a backdrop where the persona recalls an interaction with an absent figure-perhaps the father of the child or a past lover. Apples are often loaded with symbolic meaning, representing everything from sin to knowledge. The "bitten apples" suggest a reality that has been tasted but perhaps not fully consumed, hanging in a liminal state, much like the love between the persona and the absent figure.

"In the dark room your son sleeps. / The walls are green, the walls / are spruce and silence." These lines offer a temporary respite, a present-moment stillness that envelops the room. Green walls evoke life, but also indicate the specter of encroaching nature-trees that can both nourish and stifle. Spruce is sturdy, yet the "silence" accompanying it is more ambiguous, loaded with the quiet anticipation of what's next.

"I wait to see how he will leave me," the persona confesses, acknowledging the inevitable separation that occurs in all relationships-whether through growth, change, or even death. Here, love is not a fairytale but a landscape marked by seasons of closeness and detachment.

"Already on his hand the map appears / as though you carved it there, / the dead fields, women rooted to the river." These lines explore the idea of fate or predestiny, as if life's path is already carved into the child's hand. The "dead fields" and "women rooted to the river" could signify the burdens or difficulties that are part of the human condition, passed down from generation to generation.

This last image leaves the reader with a compelling paradox. Rivers signify movement, change, the passage of time, while being "rooted" is to be stagnant, fixed, grounded. This captures the essence of the poem-the tension between wanting to hold onto the present moment and the inevitable passage of time that will uproot even the deepest of connections.

"Apple Trees" is a contemplative, poignant piece that engages with the human experience through the lens of familial love. It captures the dualities inherent in any relationship: closeness and distance, life and decay, love and the inevitable letting go. Through nuanced symbols and visceral emotional resonance, Gluck has created a landscape as complex and beautiful as the relationships it explores.

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...