Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Portrait" by Louise Gluck captures the process of creation and the yearning for completeness, whether it is in art or in understanding one's place in the world. The poem begins with the image of a child sketching an outline of a body. The incompleteness of this endeavor becomes a powerful metaphor for the child's limited understanding of life, evoking a sense of absence or void that the child is aware of but cannot articulate. The child can only draw "what she can," and the figure remains "white all through," indicating not just the blankness of the paper, but perhaps also a lack of experience or comprehension that comes with youth.

This blankness becomes a space laden with tension, filled with what is not there as much as what is. The child knows "that life is missing," suggesting an awareness that transcends her years or her ability to express it. It's not simply the absence of color or detail in the drawing; it is "life" itself that is absent, making the void profound and existential. She realizes that she has separated "one background from another," isolating the subject from its context, the individual from the collective, and the known from the unknown. This line also subtly acknowledges that the act of creation is inherently an act of separation or distinction, echoing the complexities of human cognition and the challenges of articulating wholeness.

The child "turns to her mother," indicating a search for guidance, understanding, or maybe a way to fill in the gaps of her limited perspective. The mother's role becomes that of adding what is missing, of supplying life to the blank space. The mother draws "the heart against the emptiness," suggesting a deeper, emotional, and existential filling-in where the child's own capabilities fell short. The heart becomes a symbol of life, love, and experience that the child cannot yet provide but feels the absence of. Importantly, the mother doesn't fill in all the blank spaces; she adds only the heart, indicating that some things can only be filled in by emotional or lived understanding, things the child will have to discover on her own as she grows.

"Portrait" masterfully engages with the complexities of creation, understanding, and maturation. It questions how one goes from an outline to a fully realized portrait, not just in art but in life. The poem suggests that such completeness is a collaborative endeavor, where what is lacking in one's understanding is supplied by another's experience and wisdom. Yet, it leaves open the question of whether any portrait-of ourselves, of life, of understanding-can ever be truly complete. In this lingering incompleteness, in the spaces that are yet to be filled, the poem finds both its tension and its beauty.

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