An American poet and essayist is named for Louise Gluck who has won many major literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, National Humanities Medal, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Bollingen Prize, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Recently, in 2020, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” From the year 2003 to 2004, she was the Poet Laureate of the United States. The poet Craig Morgan Teicher has described her as a writer for whom “words are always scarce, hard-won, and not to be wasted”. Her poems rarely use rhyme, instead of relying on repetition, enjambment, and other techniques to achieve rhythm. Her poetry can be said to be focused on trauma, as she has written throughout her career about death, loss, rejection, the failure of relationships, and attempts at healing and renewal. She has pointed to the influence of psychoanalysis on her work, as well as her early learning in ancient legends, parables, and mythology. She has credited the influence of Leonie Adams and Stanley Kunitz. She is often described as an autobiographical poet; her work is known for its emotional intensity and for frequently drawing on myth, history, or nature to meditate on personal experiences and modern life. At present, she is an adjunct professor and Rosenkranz Writer in Residence at Yale University.
Louise Gluck wins Nobel Prize for Literature
The poet Louise Gluck has become the first American woman to win the Nobel prize for literature in 27 years. Gluck was recognized for “her unmistakable poetic voice, that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal” said the Swedish Academy, which oversees the award. The Academy added she was “surprised” when she received their phone call. She is the 16th woman to win the Nobel, and the first American woman since Toni Morrison took the prize in 1993. The American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was a surprise winner in 2016. One of America’s leading poets, the 77-year-old writer has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, tackling themes including childhood and family life, often reworking Greek and Roman myths. Glück won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris and the National Book Award in 2014. Her other honors include the 2001 Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award, given in 2008, and a National Humanities Medal, awarded in 2015. She was also editor of the anthology The Best American Poetry 1993.
Famous For
- For her lyric poems of linguistic precision and austere tone.
- Her 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.
Source: @slate
What is the Birthplace of Louise Gluck?
On 22nd April 1943, Louise Gluck was born in New York City, the USA. Her birth name/real name is Louise Elisabeth Gluck. She was born to her parents; Daniel Gluck (father), a businessman, and Beatrice Gluck (née Grosby) (mother), a homemaker. Her mother was a graduate of Wellesley College. She holds an American nationality and her ethnicity is Mixed as her mother was of Russian Jewish descent, while her paternal grandparents, Hungarian Jews, emigrated to the United States, where they eventually owned a grocery store in New York. Her race is White. As of 2020, she celebrated her 77th birthday. Her Zodiac sign is Taurus and her religion is Christian. Her father was the first member of his family born in the United States. She also has two siblings (sister). Her senior sister kicked the bucket youthful before Gluck was conceived. Her more youthful sister, Tereze (1945-2018), went through her vocation with Citibank as a VP and was additionally an honor winning creator of fiction. Her niece is the entertainer Abigail Savage.
As per her education, she received from her parents an education in Greek mythology and classic stories such as the life of Joan of Arc. From an early age, she began to write poetry. Later, she developed anorexia nervosa in which she described the illness, in one essay, as the result of an effort to assert her independence from her mother. She has connected her illness to the death of an elder sister, an event that occurred before she was born. She then attended George W. Hewlett High School, in Hewlett, New York where she began psychoanalytic treatment. She graduated in the year 1961. She also took a poetry class at Sarah Lawrence College and, from 1963 to 1965, she enrolled in poetry workshops at Columbia University’s School of General Studies, which offered a degree program for non-traditional students. She studied with Leonie Adams and Stanley Kunitz whom she has acknowledged as critical coaches in her advancement as an artist.
How was the Career of Louise Gluck?
- After her education, Louise Gluck started her career as a secretary.
- Later, she published her first collection of poems, “Firstborn” in the year 1968, which received some positive critical attention.
- After then, she began to teach poetry at Goddard College in Vermont. It was in the year 1971.
- The poems she wrote during this time were collected in her second book, “The House on Marshland” (1975). Many critics signal her “discovery of a distinctive voice”.
- After her marriage with Dranow, her husband and Francis Voigt, the husband of poet Ellen Bryant Voigt, co-founded the New England Culinary Institute as a private, for-profit college in the year 1980.
- Louise and Bryant Voigt were early investors in the institute and served on its board of directors.
- Her third collection, “Descending Figure” was published in the year 1980.
- She began to write the poems that would later be collected in her award-winning work, “The Triumph of Achilles” (1985).
- She joined the faculty of Williams College in Massachusetts as a senior lecturer in the English Department in the year 1984.
- After the death of her father, she began a new collection of poems, “Ararat” (1990) which she with one of her most popular and critically acclaimed books, “The Wild Iris” (1992).
- In the year 1994, she published a collection of essays called “Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry”.
- She also 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).
- She published a book-length poem entitled “October” in the year 2004.
- Her books published include “Averno” (2006), “A Village Life” (2009), and “Faithful and Virtuous Night” (2014).
- Ithe year n 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 the year 2017.
- In the year 2020, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”
Source: @wsj.com
Beside this,
- She was also elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999, a post she held until 2005.
- In the year 2003, she was appointed the final judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, a position she held until 2010.
Awards, Honors, and Achievements of Louise Gluck
Louise Gluck has received numerous honors during her career. She has received multiple fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. The Wild Iris, Vita Nova, and Averno were all finalists for the National Book Award. A Village Life was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. In the year 2020, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”
Honors for body of work
- National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1970)
- Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1975)
- National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1979-80)
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature (1981)
- Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1987)
- National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1988-89)
- Honorary Doctorate, Williams College (1993)
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Elected Member (1993)
- Vermont State Poet (1994-98)
- Honorary Doctorate, Middlebury College (1996)
- American Academy of Arts and Letters, Elected Member (1996)
- Lannan Literary Award (1999)
- School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 50th Anniversary Medal, MIT (2001)
- Bollingen Prize (2001)
- Poet Laureate of the United States (2003-04)
- Wallace Stevens Award of the Academy of American Poets (2008)
- Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry (2010)
- American Academy of Achievement, Elected Member (2012)
- American Philosophical Society, Elected Member (2014)
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry (2015)
- National Humanities Medal (2015)
- Transtromer Prize (2020)
- Nobel Prize in Literature (2020)
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 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 for Poems 1962-2012 (2012)
- National Book Award for Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014)
Who is Louise Gluck Married to?
Louise Gluck is a married woman. She was married twice until now. Her first marriage was to Charles Hertz, Jr. in the year 1967. The marriage ended in divorce. After that, she was married to John Dranow, an author, educator, and business person. She also has one child, Noah Dranow (born 1973), who prepared as a sommelier and lives in San Francisco. In the year 1977, the couple married. Her marriage to John Dranow ended in divorce, the difficult nature of which affected their business relationship, resulting in Dranow’s removal from his positions at the New England Culinary Institute. It was in the 1990s. As of today, she is living a single life happily without any disturbances. Her sexual orientation is straight. She is currently residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
How much is Louise Gluck’s Net Worth?
Louise Gluck is a famous Nobel Prize winner poet and essayist. She has written and published many poems and books during her career. As of 2020, the exact net worth of Louise is still a mystery as it has not been calculated yet. There is no doubt that her net worth is between $1 Million-$5 Million. Whereas the details about her salary have not been revealed yet. Her major source of wealth comes from poetry career and she is satisfied with her earnings as of now.
How tall is Louise Gluck?
At the age of 77, Louise Gluck still looks very pretty with a beautiful face. She has got a charming smile attracting a lot of people towards her. Her hair color is pepper and salt whereas her eye color is light brown. Her body build is slim. She has got a perfect height matching with her body weight. Her other body measurements such as breast size, dress size, shoe size, and more have not been disclosed yet. She maintains her body a lot. Overall, she has got a healthy body.
Poetry Collections of Louise Gluck
- Firstborn. The New American Library, 1968.
- The House on Marshland. The Ecco Press, 1975. ISBN 0-912946-18-0
- Descending Figure. The Ecco Press, 1980. ISBN 0-912946-71-7
- The Triumph of Achilles. The Ecco Press, 1985. ISBN 0-88001-081-9
- Ararat. The Ecco Press, 1990. ISBN 0-88001-247-1
- The Wild Iris. The Ecco Press, 1992. ISBN 0-88001-281-1
- The First Four Books of Poems. The Ecco Press, 1995. ISBN 0-88001-421-0
- Meadowlands. The Ecco Press, 1997. ISBN 0-88001-452-0
- Vita Nova. The Ecco Press, 1999. ISBN 0-88001-634-5
- The Seven Ages. The Ecco Press, 2001. ISBN 0-06-018526-0
- Averno. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2006. ISBN 0-374-10742-4
- A Village Life. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009. ISBN 0-374-28374-5
- Poems: 1962-2012. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2012. ISBN 978-0-374-12608-7
- Faithful and Virtuous Night. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014. ISBN 978-0-374-15201-7
Chapbooks of Louise Gluck
- The Garden. Antaeus Editions, 1976.
- October. Sarabande Books, 2004. ISBN 1-932511-00-8
Prose collections of Louise Gluck
- Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry. The Ecco Press, 1994. ISBN 0-88001-442-3
- American Originality: Essays on Poetry. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2017. ISBN 978-0-374-29955-2
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