Louise Glück was a poet and essayist whose exploration of trauma, death, loss, and struggle earned her the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and many others.
- Died: October 13, 2023 (Who else died on October 13?)
- Details of death: Died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of cancer at the age of 80.
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Louise Glück’s legacy
Glück first began exploring her literary muse as a teenager suffering from anorexia nervosa. The struggle ravaged her health throughout her young adulthood. Poetry workshops at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University’s School of General Studies focused her attention on expressing her trauma through writing, and soon she began to publish her work. Her poems landed in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and others. Glück’s first collection, “Firstborn,” was published in 1968 and received critical praise.
Further collections followed, including 1985’s “The Triumph of Achilles,” which earned her widespread acclaim. Glück would continue to earn accolades, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for “The Wild Iris.” Exploring loss, trauma, pain, and sorrow, she released other notable collections, including 2004’s “October” which was inspired by the attacks of 9/11.
Glück was among the most decorated poets of her time, winning almost every major literary accolade. In 2003 and 2004, she was named Poet Laureate of the United States. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020, only the 16th woman to do so since the award’s creation in 1901. She won such honors as the Bollingen Prize, National Humanities Medal, National Book Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Glück earned fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and more. She was also an educator, teaching at such institutions as Stanford University, Boston University, and Yale.
Notable quote
“It’s so obviously the most miraculous thing to do. I have to remind myself that not everyone in the world actually wants to be a poet.”— from a 2014 interview on The Poet’s View
Tributes to Louise Glück
Full obituary: The New York Times
