A poet of unblinking candor and perception who wove classical allusions, mythology and nature to explore themes of love, loss and survival, Nobel laureate Louise Glück passed away on Friday, aged 80.
Her work was often deeply personal, drawing from her own struggles and seamlessly weaving them with struggles that are universal. With over more than 60 years of published work, Glück forged a narrative of trauma, disillusion, and longing, spelled by moments of ecstasy and contentment.
While awarding her the literature prize in 2020, the first time an American poet had been honored since T S Eliot in 1948, Nobel judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." Glück's poems were often brief, a page or less in length, but exemplars of her attachment to "the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence."
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She was also a recepient of the Pulitzer prize in 1993 for Wild Iris, a book of poems that dealt with themes of suffering, death and rebirth. Her other published works include the collections The Seven Ages, The Triumph of Achilles, Vita Nova and the anthology Poems 1962-2012.
Influenced by Shakespeare, Greek mythology and Eliot among others, she questioned and at times dismissed outright the bonds of love and sex, what she called the "premise of union" in her most famous poem, "Mock Orange."
"The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last," she once wrote.
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Here is one of her poems titled 'Crossroads' from A VILLAGE LIFE
My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar,
like what I remember of love when I was young—
love that was so often foolish in its objectives
but never in its choices, its intensities.
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised—
My soul has been so fearful, so violent:
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,
not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:
it is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss.
