Louise Elisabeth Glück ( ; born April 22, 1943) is an American poet and essayist. She won the
2020 Nobel Prize in Literature
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the American poet Louise Glück (born 1943) who the Swedish Academy members praised "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." The winner was ...
, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal".
Her other awards include the
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
,
National Humanities Medal
The National Humanities Medal is an American award that annually recognizes several individuals, groups, or institutions for work that has "deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement with the human ...
,
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
,
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".[Bollingen Prize
The Bollingen Prize for Poetry is a literary honor bestowed on an American poet in recognition of the best book of new verse within the last two years, or for lifetime achievement.] . From 2003 to 2004, she was
Poet Laureate of the United States
The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...
.
Glück was born in New York City and raised on
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
. She began to suffer from
anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa, often referred to simply as anorexia, is an eating disorder characterized by low weight, food restriction, body image disturbance, fear of gaining weight, and an overpowering desire to be thin. ''Anorexia'' is a term of Gr ...
while in high school and later overcame the illness. She attended
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a Private university, private liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York. The college models its approach to education after the Supervision system, Oxford/Cambridge system of one-on-one student-faculty tutorials. Sara ...
and
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
but did not obtain a degree. In addition to being an author, she has taught poetry at several academic institutions.
Glück is often described as an autobiographical poet; her work is known for its emotional intensity and for frequently drawing on mythology or nature imagery to meditate on personal experiences and modern life. Thematically, her poems have illuminated aspects of
trauma
Trauma most often refers to:
* Major trauma, in physical medicine, severe physical injury caused by an external source
* Psychological trauma, a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event
*Traumatic i ...
, desire, and nature. In doing so, they have become known for frank expressions of sadness and
isolation. Scholars have also focused on her construction of poetic personas and the relationship, in her poems, between autobiography and classical myth.
Glück is the Frederick Iseman Professor in the Practice of Poetry at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
. She splits her time between
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
, and
Montpelier, Vermont
Montpelier () is the capital city of the U.S. state of Vermont and the seat of Washington County. The site of Vermont's state government, it is the least populous state capital in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population w ...
.
Biography
Early life
Louise Glück was born in New York City on April 22, 1943. She is the elder of two surviving daughters of Daniel Glück, a businessman, and Beatrice Glück (née Grosby), a homemaker.
Glück's mother was of Russian Jewish descent.
Her paternal grandparents, Terézia (née Moskovitz) and Henrik Glück, were Hungarian Jews from
Érmihályfalva
Valea lui Mihai (; hu, Érmihályfalva) is a town in Bihor County, Crișana, Romania.
Geography
It is located around 66 km north-east of Oradea, 9 km from the Hungarian border in Bihor County, Crișana, Romania.
History
In 1312, un ...
,
Bihar County
Bihar was an administrative county (comitatus) of the Kingdom of Hungary and a county of the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom and Principality of Transylvania (since the 16th century, when it was under the rule of the Princes of Transylvania). Most of ...
, in what was then the
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the coronation of the first king Stephen ...
,
Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Romania); her grandfather ran a timber company called "Feldmann és Glück". They emigrated to the United States in December 1900 and eventually owned a grocery store in New York.
Glück's father, who was born in the United States, had an ambition to become a writer, but went into business with his brother-in-law. Together, they achieved success when they invented the
X-Acto knife.
Glück's mother was a graduate of
Wellesley College. In her childhood, Glück's parents taught her
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
and classic stories such as the life of
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc (french: link=yes, Jeanne d'Arc, translit= �an daʁk} ; 1412 – 30 May 1431) is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronat ...
. She began to write poetry at an early age.
As a teenager, Glück developed
anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa, often referred to simply as anorexia, is an eating disorder characterized by low weight, food restriction, body image disturbance, fear of gaining weight, and an overpowering desire to be thin. ''Anorexia'' is a term of Gr ...
,
which became the defining challenge of her late teenage and young adult years. She has described the illness, in one essay, as the result of an effort to assert her independence from her mother.
Elsewhere, she has connected her illness to the death of an elder sister, an event that occurred before she was born.
During the fall of her senior year at
George W. Hewlett High School
George W. Hewlett High School (also known as Hewlett High School, or HHS, and replacing Woodmere High School) is a four-year public high school in Hewlett Bay Park, New York, United States. Located in the Five Towns area of Long Island, it is t ...
, in
Hewlett, New York
Hewlett is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the Town of Hempstead in Nassau County, on Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 6,819 at the 2010 census.
Hewlett is usually included as one of the Five Towns in th ...
, she began
psychoanalytic treatment. A few months later, she was taken out of school in order to focus on her rehabilitation, although she still graduated in 1961. Of that decision, she has written, "I understood that at some point I was going to die. What I knew more vividly, more viscerally, was that I did not want to die".
She spent the next seven years in therapy, which she has credited with helping her to overcome the illness and teaching her how to think.
As a result of her condition, Glück did not enroll in college as a full-time student. She has described her decision to forgo higher education in favor of therapy as necessary: "…my emotional condition, my extreme rigidity of behavior and frantic dependence on ritual made other forms of education impossible". Instead, she took a poetry class at Sarah Lawrence College and, from 1963 to 1966, she enrolled in poetry workshops at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
's
School of General Studies
The School of General Studies, Columbia University (GS) is a liberal arts college and one of the undergraduate colleges of Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights, New York City. GS is known primarily ...
, which offered courses for non-degree students.
While there, she studied with
Léonie Adams
Léonie Fuller Adams (December 9, 1899 – June 27, 1988) was an American poet. She was appointed the seventh Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1948.
Biography
Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in ...
and
Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (; July 29, 1905May 14, 2006) was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.
Biography
Kunitz was born in Worcester, Massac ...
. She has credited these teachers as significant mentors in her development as a poet.
Career
While attending poetry workshops, Glück began to publish her poems. Her first publication was in ''
Mademoiselle'', followed soon after by poems in ''
Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
'', ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', ''
The Atlantic Monthly
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', ''
The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'', and other venues. After leaving Columbia, Glück supported herself with secretarial work.
She married Charles Hertz Jr. in 1967.
In 1968, Glück published her first collection of poems, ''Firstborn'', which received some positive critical attention. In a review, the poet
Robert Hass
Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941) is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Award and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection ''Time and Materials: Poems 1997 ...
described the book as "hard, artful, and full of pain". However, reflecting on it in 2003, the critic Stephen Burt claimed that the collection "revealed a forceful but clotted poet, an anxious imitator of
Robert Lowell and
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, '' Th ...
". Following the publication, Glück experienced a prolonged case of writer's block, which was only cured, she has said, after 1971, when she began to teach poetry at
Goddard College
Goddard College is a progressive education private liberal arts low-residency college with three locations in the United States: Plainfield, Vermont; Port Townsend, Washington; and Seattle, Washington. The college offers undergraduate and gra ...
in Vermont.
The poems she wrote during this time were collected in her second book, ''The House on Marshland'' (1975), which many critics have regarded as her breakthrough work, signaling her "discovery of a distinctive voice".
In 1973, Glück gave birth to a son, Noah.
Her marriage to Charles Hertz Jr. ended in divorce, and in 1977 she married John Dranow, an author who had started the summer writing program at Goddard College.
In 1980, Dranow and Francis Voigt, the husband of poet
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Ellen Bryant Voigt (born May 9, 1943) is an American poet. She served as the Poet Laureate of Vermont.
Biography
Voigt was born May 9, 1943, in Danville, Virginia. She grew up in Chatham, Virginia, graduated from Converse College, and received an ...
, co-founded the
New England Culinary Institute
The New England Culinary Institute (NECI) was a private for-profit culinary school in Montpelier, Vermont. It was founded on June 15, 1980, by Fran Voigt and John Dranow. The first NECI class, conducted by Chef Michel LeBorgne, had seven st ...
as a private, for-profit college. Glück and Bryant Voigt were early investors in the institute and served on its board of directors.
In 1980, Glück's third collection, ''Descending Figure'', was published. It received some criticism for its tone and subject matter: for example, the poet
Greg Kuzma
Greg Kuzma (born July 14, 1944 in Rome, New York), is an American poet, essayist, poetry reviewer, and editor, who has written and published more than 30 books. Mostly in the 1970s, more than 300 of his poems were published in the nation's most p ...
accused Glück of being a "child hater" for her now anthologized poem, "The Drowned Children". On the whole, however, the book was well received. In ''
The American Poetry Review
''The American Poetry Review'' (''APR'') is an American poetry magazine printed every other month on tabloid-sized newsprint. It was founded in 1972 by Stephen Berg and Stephen Parker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The magazine's editor is Elizabet ...
'',
Mary Kinzie
Mary Kinzie (born September 30, 1944) is an American poet.
Life
She received her B.A. from Northwestern University in 1967, and returned there to teach in 1975. She won Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson fellowships to do graduate work at the Free U ...
praised the book's illumination of "deprived, harmed, stammering beings". Writing in ''Poetry'', the poet and critic
J.D. McClatchy claimed the book was "a considerable advance on Glück's previous work" and "one of the year's outstanding books". That same year, a fire destroyed Glück's house in Vermont, resulting in the loss of most of her possessions.
In the wake of that tragedy, Glück began to write the poems that would later be collected in her award-winning work, ''
The Triumph of Achilles'' (1985). Writing in ''The New York Times'', the author and critic
Liz Rosenberg
Lizbeth Meg Rosenberg (born February 3, 1955) is an American poet, novelist, children's book author and book reviewer. She is currently a professor of English at Binghamton University, and in previous years has taught at Colgate University, Sara ...
described the collection as "clearer, purer, and sharper" than Glück's previous work. The critic Peter Stitt, writing in ''
The Georgia Review
''The Georgia Review'' is a literary journal based in Athens, Georgia. Founded at University of Georgia in 1947, the journal features poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, and visual art. The journal has won National Magazine Awards for Fiction ...
'', declared that the book showed Glück to be "among the important poets of our age". From the collection, the poem "Mock Orange", which has been likened to a feminist anthem, has been called an "anthology piece" because of its frequent inclusion in poetry anthologies and college courses.
In 1984, Glück joined the faculty of
Williams College
Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...
in Massachusetts as a senior lecturer in the English Department. The following year, her father died. The loss prompted her to begin a new collection of poems, ''Ararat'' (1990), the title of which references the mountain of the
Genesis flood narrative. Writing in ''The New York Times'' in 2012, the critic
Dwight Garner called it "the most brutal and sorrow-filled book of American poetry published in the last 25 years".
Glück followed this collection with one of her most popular and critically acclaimed books, ''
The Wild Iris
''The Wild Iris'' is a 1992 poetry book by Louise Glück, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993. The book also received the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award.
Contents
* "The Wild Iris"
* "Matins"
* ...
'' (1992), which features garden flowers in conversation with a gardener and a deity about the nature of life. ''Publishers Weekly'' proclaimed it an "important book" that showcased "poetry of great beauty". The critic Elizabeth Lund, writing in ''The'' ''Christian Science Monitor'', called it "a milestone work". It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1993, cementing Glück's reputation as a preeminent American poet.
While the 1990s brought Glück literary success, it was also a period of personal hardship. Her marriage to John Dranow ended in divorce in 1996, the difficult nature of which affected their business relationship, resulting in Dranow's removal from his positions at the New England Culinary Institute.
Glück channeled her experience into her writing, entering a prolific period of her career. In 1994, she published a collection of essays called ''Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry''. She then produced ''Meadowlands'' (1996), a collection of poetry about the nature of love and the deterioration of a marriage. She followed it with two more collections: ''Vita Nova'' (1999) and ''The Seven Ages'' (2001).
In 2004, in response to the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
, Glück published a
chapbook entitled ''October''. Consisting of one poem divided into six parts, it draws on ancient Greek myth to explore aspects of trauma and suffering. That same year, she was named the Rosenkranz Writer in Residence at Yale University.
Since joining the faculty of Yale, Glück has continued to publish poetry. Her books published during this period include ''Averno'' (2006), ''A Village Life'' (2009), and ''
Faithful and Virtuous Night'' (2014). In 2012, the publication of a collection of a half-century's worth of her poems, entitled ''Poems: 1962–2012'', was called "a literary event". Another collection of her essays, entitled ''American Originality'', appeared in 2017.
In October 2020, Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the sixteenth female literature laureate since the prize was founded in 1901. Due to restrictions caused by the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, she received her prize at her home. In her Nobel lecture, which was delivered in writing, she highlighted her early engagement with poetry by
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...
and
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.
Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...
in discussing the relationship between poets, readers, and the wider public.
In 2021, Glück's collection, ''Winter Recipes from the Collective'', was published. In 2022, she was named the Frederick Iseman Professor in the Practice of Poetry at Yale.
Family
Glück's elder sister died young before Glück was born. Her younger sister, Tereze (1945–2018), worked at
Citibank as a vice president and was also a writer, winning the
Iowa Short Fiction Award
The Iowa Short Fiction Award is an annual award given for a first collection of short fiction. It has been described as "a respected prize" by the ''Chicago Tribune'', and ''The New York Times'' considered it "among the most prestigious literary p ...
in 1995 for her book, ''May You Live in Interesting Times''. Glück's niece is the actress
Abigail Savage
Abigail Savage is an American actress and sound editor. She played inmate Gina Murphy on Netflix's '' Orange Is the New Black'', as well as roles in Brian De Palma's '' Redacted'' (2007), Lee Daniel's '' Precious'' (2009)'','' and on ''Law & Or ...
.
Work
Glück's work has been, and continues to be, the subject of academic study. Her papers, including manuscripts, correspondence, and other materials, are housed at the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts. Es ...
at Yale University.
Form
Glück is best known for lyric poems of linguistic precision and dark tone. The poet
Craig Morgan Teicher
Craig Morgan Teicher (born 1979) is an American author, poet and literary critic. His poetry collection, ''The Trembling Answers'', won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 2018. He currently lives in New Jersey. Biography
Teicher was born in N ...
has described her as a writer for whom "words are always scarce, hard won, and not to be wasted". The scholar Laura Quinney has argued that her careful use of words has put Glück into "the line of American poets who value fierce lyric compression," from
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.
Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...
to
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Awar ...
.
Glück's poems have shifted in form throughout her career, beginning with short, terse lyrics composed of compact lines and expanding into connected book-length sequences. Her work is not known for poetic techniques such as rhyme or alliteration. Rather, the poet Robert Hahn has called her style "radically inconspicuous" or "virtually an absence of style", relying on a voice that blends "portentous intonations" with a conversational approach.
Among scholars and reviewers, there has been discussion as to whether Glück is a
confessional poet
Confessional poetry or "Confessionalism" is a style of poetry that emerged in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is sometimes classified as a form of Postmodernism. It has been described as poetry of the personal or "I", f ...
, owing to the prevalence of the first-person mode in her poems and their intimate subject matter, often inspired by events in Glück's personal life. The scholar Robert Baker has argued that Glück "is surely a confessional poet in some basic sense", while the critic Michael Robbins has argued that Glück's poetry, unlike that of confessional poets
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, '' Th ...
or
John Berryman
John Allyn McAlpin Berryman (born John Allyn Smith, Jr.; October 25, 1914 – January 7, 1972) was an American poet and scholar. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is considered a key figure in th ...
, "depends upon the fiction of privacy".
In other words, she cannot be a confessional poet, Robbins argues, if she does not address an audience. Going further, Quinney argues that, to Glück, the confessional poem is "odious".
Others have noted that Glück's poems can be viewed as autobiographical, while her technique of inhabiting various personas, ranging from ancient Greek gods to garden flowers, renders her poems more than mere confessions. As the scholar
Helen Vendler has noted: "In their obliquity and reserve,
lück's poemsoffer an alternative to first-person 'confession', while remaining indisputably personal".
Themes
While Glück's work is thematically diverse, scholars and critics have identified several themes that are paramount. Most prominently, Glück's poetry can be said to focus on trauma, as she has written throughout her career about death, loss, suffering, failed relationships, and attempts at healing and renewal. The scholar Daniel Morris notes that even a Glück poem that uses traditionally happy or idyllic imagery "suggests the author's awareness of mortality, of the loss of innocence".
The scholar Joanne Feit Diehl echoes this notion when she argues that "this 'sense of an ending'… infuses Glück's poems with their retrospective power", pointing to her transformation of common objects, such as a baby stroller, into representations of loneliness and loss. Yet, for Glück, trauma is arguably a gateway to a greater appreciation of life, a concept explored in ''The Triumph of Achilles''. The triumph to which the title alludes is Achilles' acceptance of mortality—which enables him to become a more fully realized human being.
Another of Glück's common themes is desire. Glück has written directly about many forms of desire—for example, the desire for love or insight—but her approach is marked by ambivalence. Morris argues that Glück's poems, which often adopt contradictory points of view, reflect "her own ambivalent relationship to status, power, morality, gender, and, most of all, language". The author Robert Boyer has characterized Glück's ambivalence as a result of "strenuous self-interrogation". He argues that "Glück's poems at their best have always moved between recoil and affirmation, sensuous immediacy and reflection … for a poet who can often seem earthbound and defiantly unillusioned, she has been powerfully responsive to the lure of the daily miracle and the sudden upsurge of overmastering emotion". The tension between competing desires in Glück's work manifests both in her assumption of different personas from poem to poem and in her varied approach to each collection of her poems. This has led the poet and scholar
James Longenbach
James Longenbach (Sept. 17, 1959 – July 29, 2022) was an Americans, American critic and poet. His early critical work focused on modernist poetry, namely that of Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, and Wallace Stevens, but came to include contemporary poetr ...
to declare that "change is Louise Glück's highest value" and "if change is what she most craves, it is also what she most resists, what is most difficult for her, most hard-won".
Another of Glück's preoccupations is nature, the setting for many of her poems. In ''The Wild Iris'', the poems take place in a garden where flowers have intelligent, emotive voices. However, Morris points out that ''The House on Marshland'' is also concerned with nature and can be read as a revision of the
Romantic tradition of nature poetry. In ''Ararat'', too, "flowers become a language of mourning", useful for both commemoration and competition among mourners to determine the "ownership of nature as a meaningful system of symbolism". Thus, in Glück's work nature is both something to be regarded critically and embraced. As the author and critic
Alan Williamson
Alan may refer to:
People
* Alan (surname), an English and Turkish surname
* Alan (given name), an English given name
**List of people with given name Alan
''Following are people commonly referred to solely by "Alan" or by a homonymous name.''
* ...
has pointed out, it can also sometimes suggest the divine, as when, in the poem "Celestial Music", the speaker states that "when you love the world you hear celestial music", or when, in ''The Wild Iris'', the deity speaks through changes in weather.
Glück's poetry is also notable for what it avoids. Morris argues that "Glück's writing most often evades ethnic identification, religious classification, or gendered affiliation. In fact, her poetry often negates critical assessments that affirm
identity politics
Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these i ...
as criteria for literary evaluation. She resists canonization as a hyphenated poet (that is, as a "Jewish-American" poet, or a "feminist" poet, or a "nature" poet), preferring instead to retain an aura of iconoclasm, or in-betweenness".
Influences
Glück has pointed to the influence of
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
on her work, as well as her early learning in ancient legends, parables, and mythology. In addition, she has credited the influence of Léonie Adams and Stanley Kunitz. Scholars and critics have pointed to the literary influence on her work of Robert Lowell,
Rainer Maria Rilke,
and
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.
Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...
, among others.
Selected bibliography
Poetry collections
* ''Firstborn''. The New American Library, 1968.
* ''The House on Marshland''. The Ecco Press, 1975.
* ''Descending Figure''. The Ecco Press, 1980.
* ''
The Triumph of Achilles''. The Ecco Press, 1985.
* ''Ararat''. The Ecco Press, 1990.
* ''
The Wild Iris
''The Wild Iris'' is a 1992 poetry book by Louise Glück, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993. The book also received the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award.
Contents
* "The Wild Iris"
* "Matins"
* ...
''. The Ecco Press, 1992.
* ''
Meadowlands''. The Ecco Press, 1997.
* ''Vita Nova''. The Ecco Press, 1999.
* ''The Seven Ages''. The Ecco Press, 2001.
* ''
Averno''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.
* ''A Village Life''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
* ''Poems: 1962–2012''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
* ''
Faithful and Virtuous Night''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
* ''Winter Recipes from the Collective''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
Omnibus editions
* ''The First Four Books of Poems''. The Ecco Press, 1995.
* ''The First Five Books of Poems''. Carcanet Press, 1997.
Chapbooks
* ''The Garden''. Antaeus Editions, 1976.
* ''October''. Sarabande Books, 2004.
Essay collections
* ''Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry''. The Ecco Press, 1994.
* ''American Originality: Essays on Poetry''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
Fiction
* ''Marigold and Rose: A Fiction''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.
Honors
Glück has received numerous honors for her work. Below are honors she has received for both her body of work and individual works.
Honors for body of work
*
Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1967)
*
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1970)
*
Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1975)
* National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1979)
* American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature (1981)
* Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1987)
[
* National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1988)]
* Honorary Doctorate, Williams College
Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...
(1993)
* American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
, Elected Member (1993)
* Vermont State Poet (1994–1998)
* Honorary Doctorate, Skidmore College
Skidmore College is a Private school, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Saratoga Springs, New York. Approximately 2,650 students are enrolled at Skidmore pursuing a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Scien ...
(1995)
* Honorary Doctorate, Middlebury College (1996)
* American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
, Elected Member (1996)
* Lannan Literary Award
The Lannan Literary Awards are a series of awards and literary fellowships given out in various fields by the Lannan Foundation. Established in 1989, the awards are meant "to honor both established and emerging writers whose work is of exceptional ...
(1999)
* School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 50th Anniversary Medal, MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
(2001)
* Bollingen Prize (2001)
* Poet Laureate of the United States (2003–2004)
* Wallace Stevens Award
The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...
of the Academy of American Poets (2008)
* Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry
The Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry is an annual prize, administered by the ''Sewanee Review'' and the University of the South, awarded to a writer who has had a substantial and distinguished career. It was established through a beq ...
(2010)
* American Academy of Achievement
The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...
, Elected Member (2012)
* American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
, Elected Member (2014)
* American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal
Two American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medals are awarded each year by the academy for distinguished achievement. The two awards are taken in rotation from these categories:
*Belles Lettres and Criticism, and Painting;
*Biography and Mus ...
in Poetry (2015)
* National Humanities Medal (2015)
* Tranströmer Prize (2020)
* Nobel Prize in Literature (2020)
*Honorary Doctorate, Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
(2021)
Honors for individual works
* Melville Cane Award for ''The Triumph of Achilles'' (1985)
* National Book Critics Circle Award for ''The Triumph of Achilles'' (1985)
* Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry for ''Ararat'' (1992)
* William Carlos Williams Award
The William Carlos Williams Award is given out by the Poetry Society of America for a poetry book published by a small press, non-profit, or university press.
The award is endowed by the family and friends of Geraldine Clinton Little, a poet an ...
for ''The Wild Iris'' (1993)
* Pulitzer Prize for ''The Wild Iris'' (1993)
* PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction for ''Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry'' (1995)
* Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for ''Vita Nova'' (2000)
* Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for ''Averno'' (2007)
* L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for ''Averno'' (2007)
* Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Since 1980, the ''Los Angeles Times'' has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes currently have nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), history, mystery/thriller ...
for ''Poems 1962–2012'' (2012)
* National Book Award for ''Faithful and Virtuous Night'' (2014)
In addition, ''The Wild Iris'', ''Vita Nova'', and ''Averno'' were all finalists for the National Book Award. ''The Seven Ages'' was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. ''A Village Life'' was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize.
Glück's poems have been widely anthologized, including in the ''Norton Anthology of Poetry,'' the ''Oxford Book of American Poetry'', and the ''Columbia Anthology of American Poetry''.
Elected or invited posts
In 1999, Glück, along with the poets Rita Dove
Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the positi ...
and W. S. Merwin
William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thema ...
, was asked to serve as a special consultant to the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
for that institution's bicentennial. In this capacity, she helped the Library of Congress to determine programming to mark its 200th anniversary celebration. In 1999, she was also elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, a post she held until 2005. In 2003, she was appointed the judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets
The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the Uni ...
, a position she held until 2010. The Yale Series is the oldest annual literary competition in the United States, and during her time as judge, she selected for publication works by the poets Peter Streckfus
Peter Streckfus (born 1969 in San Antonio, Texas) is an American poet.
His first book, ''The Cuckoo'', won the 2003 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, chosen by Louise Glück. His second book, ''Errings'', won Fordham University Press's 2 ...
and Fady Joudah
Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American poet and physician. He is the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for his collection of poems ''The Earth in the Attic''.
Life
Joudah was born in Austin, Texas in 1971 to Palestinian ...
, among others.
Glück has been a visiting faculty member at many institutions, including Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
, the University of North Carolina, Greensboro
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG or UNC Greensboro) is a public research university in Greensboro, North Carolina. It is part of the University of North Carolina system. UNCG, like all members of the UNC system, is a stand-al ...
, and the Iowa Writers Workshop
The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wr ...
.
References
Further reading
* Burnside, John, ''The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century'', London: Profile Books, 2019,
* Dodd, Elizabeth, ''The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet: H.D., Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Glück'', Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992,
* Doreski, William, ''The Modern Voice in American Poetry'', Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995,
* Feit Diehl, Joanne, editor, ''On Louise Glück: Change What You See'', Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005,
* Gosmann, Uta, ''Poetic Memory: The Forgotten Self in Plath, Howe, Hinsey, and Glück'', Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011,
* Harrison, DeSales, ''The End of the Mind: The Edge of the Intelligible in Hardy, Stevens, Larkin, Plath, and Glück'', New York and London: Routledge, 2005,
* Morris, Daniel, ''The Poetry of Louise Glück: A Thematic Introduction'', Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006,
* Upton, Lee, ''The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five American Poets'', Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1998,
* Upton, Lee, ''Defensive Measures: The Poetry of Niedecker, Bishop, Glück, and Carson'', Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005,
* Vendler, Helen, ''Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980,
* Zuba, Jesse, ''The First Book: Twentieth-Century Poetic Careers in America'', Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016,
External links
Louise Glück
Online resources from the Library of Congress
* Louise Glück Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gluck, Louise
1943 births
Living people
American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American Poets Laureate
American women poets
Bollingen Prize recipients
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
George W. Hewlett High School alumni
Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty
Jewish American poets
National Endowment for the Arts Fellows
People from Hewlett, New York
Poets Laureate of Vermont
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners
Sarah Lawrence College alumni
The New Yorker people
University of Iowa faculty
Williams College faculty
Writers from Cambridge, Massachusetts
Writers from New York City
Yale University faculty
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
American Nobel laureates
Nobel laureates in Literature
Women Nobel laureates
National Humanities Medal recipients