The Biography of Louise Glück

Our Laureate
By: Francesca Boone
 

Poet laureate of the United States of America, Louise Glück, evokes powerful emotion even when using simple language.  Her poetry includes themes of despair, bitterness, grief, loss, and falling in and out of love.  Glück writes melancholy, lyrical poetry with great punctuation and rhythm. Glück “can weave a message of hope into her into her verse” (library.bigchalk.com).  Stanley Kunitz, a former laureate, was her mentor and teacher in college at Columbia University, and is one of the key people who influenced Glück.

Louise Elizabeth Glück was born in New York City, and grew up on Long Island.  She attended Hewlett High School, graduating in 1961.  She started sending manuscripts to publishers when she was still a teenager.  Glück had anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder, as teen.  This ordeal has clearly influenced her writing.  Glück attended poetry workshops for two years at Columbia University with Dr. Leonie Adams, and studied for four years with Stanley Kunitz.  Glück has taught at Columbia University at New York, University of Iowa, University of California at Berkeley, Brandeis University, and Harvard.  Glück currently lives in Vermont, and teaches at Williams College. 

Glück has won many awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, Academy of American Poets Prize, Pulitzer Prize, 1995 PEN/Martha Albrand Award, Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Billington Prize for Poetry.  Her ten published works are Firstborn (1968), The House on Marshland (1975), Descending Figure (1980), The Triumph of Archilles (1985), Ararat (1990), The Wild Iris (1992), Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry(1994), Meadowlands (1997), Vita Nova (1999), and The Seven Ages(2001).