Mock Orange- Louise Gluck

Mock Orange, written by Louise Gluck, displays the author's negative perception, or better yet currently bitter towards the idea of love.  The poet opens with telling us that one would be mistaken if they thought that the moon was lighting up her back yard, because it really is her flowers.  She goes on to say how much she dislikes the flowers, as well as how much she hates sex.  We see the author struggle over some sort of "mock orange" scent that enters through her window, and in the end she tells us that she is having trouble being happy with the smell of orange still present in her life.  

The first paragraph lets us know that the author is a pessimistic woman.  It is a common staple of romance novels, or stories about love, to use the moon as an object of beauty.  The idea of moonlight has a romantic connotation, one that Gluck is letting us know from the get go is not real.  She says that "It is not the moon, I tell you.  It is these flowers lighting the yard."  I think this is significant, mainly because while the moon is always present in ones life, flowers grow and die.  Flowers are plants that you plant yourself, and take care of yourself while the moon is something much larger than the flowers that one has no control over.  

Gluck goes on discussing the flowers, saying that she "hates them.  I hate them as much as I hate sex, the man's mouth sealing my mouth, the man's paralyzing body."  I think this lets the reader know that Gluck does not believe in love or sex.  Her description of sex, using such terms as "sealing my mouth", and "paralyzing body", comes off as violent if not unwilling.  She is even negative when discussing the orgasm, saying "the cry that always escapes, the low, humiliating premise of union--." Gluck has completely depersonalized sex.  It is no longer an act of love.  

I am led to believe that Louise Gluck, throughout this whole poem, is telling us that she was once in love, yet now tries to replace this man or woman she loves with sex, even though she knows that it hurts even more.  I believe that the "scent of orange" that wafts in through the window that Gluck talks about, is symbolic of her loyalty to the person that she loves.  I believe that she feel as if sex is horrible, and that she is embarrassed to orgasm, because she knows that it is not with the right person.  I would also argue that it is possible that the person she loved is no longer alive.  For one, flowers are a common gift for funerals.  Also, she ays that this odor that she loves so much, that of orange, is still in the world, yet she never says where the scent comes from, and if the source is still in this world.  I think that Gluck is telling us that she cannot move on, or find someone knew, when everything around her constantly reminds her of the one she lost.