Web photo courtesy of achievement.org (American Academy of Achievement)
Louise Glück has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
This is outstanding news and very special for Massachusetts and New England, places with strong connections to poet Louise Glück over the decades.
As it happens, I studied with her for a term in the master of fine arts program in writing at University of California, Irvine, in the mid-1980s. In class, she paid close attention to the student work and made constructive comments. Beyond her award-winning writing, she has been an inspiring and kind teacher to thousands of upcoming writers. At Irvine I tested myself in a professional setting and came away encouraged to keep going after being in the workshop with Louise Glück and another teacher-poet, Garrett Hongo.
This Nobel Prize puts her in legendary company of poets from our area, especially the women writers, from the first notable poet in America, Anne Bradstreet of North Andover, to Phyllis Wheatley of Boston, first African American poet in the nation; from Emily Dickinson, the incomparable, to the under-appreciated Lucy Larcom, poet, memoirist, and abolitionist with Lowell links; and then later Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Adrienne Rich as well as the very popular Mary Oliver associated with Cape Cod.
It’s worth noting that other major poets, white men in particular, in Massachusetts and New England whom we think of as top-tier are not Nobel laureates: Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Lowell, for example. T. S. Eliot, who won the Nobel in 1948, touches Massachusetts, Harvard University and Cape Ann, but he’s from St. Louis and moved to England. And who would be a contender in the region today? Again, among men. Charles Simic, perhaps. Martin Espada is still building his body of work. Women writers and writers of color are ascendant in American poetry.
Louise Glück writes beautifully about the natural world and goes deep into the interior, where it can be dark, as she makes sense of the human condition. The poems are often informed by classical myths and religious sources. She closes the time gap as she writes about contemporary life in the context of ages-old experience.
A lot of people don't know her name, not surprising for any poet in America. My friend John Suiter in Chicago tells a story about talking to a big-time literary agent in New York City about a book he proposed to write about Gary Snyder and other poets. The agent said, “I don’t know Snyder.” John mentioned that Snyder had won the Pulitzer Prize some years before. The agent asked John, “Do you know who won the Pulitzer for poetry this year?” John did not. “Louise Glück,” the agent replied, adding, “These people are a dime a dozen.” Well, the Nobel Prize in Literature is not a dime a dozen.
She's been a poet's poet, and now, I hope, will break through the pop culture noise to gain a wider audience of readers. It's not "easy" poetry, but if people give her writing a try they can find something of lasting value, a fresh insight or memorable observation or as Robert Frost said, "a momentary stay against confusion."