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Louise Glück lives a quiet life. When Dagens Nyheter talks to her, she is at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two different mobile phones can be heard ringing in the background. Every time a signal sounds, she is silent and waits for it.
– I’m happy but it’s very strange that I don’t want to become a celebrity, I’ve never had much to do with journalists. I want to have good dinners with my friends and write a poem, when I arrive.
Is this how you write?
– Yes, approximately. I write when the poems come to me.
He receives the award with the motivation: “For his unmistakable poetic voice, which with austere beauty makes the existence of the individual human being universal”. When the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Mats Malm, called a room before the announcement, it was 6:45 in Massachusetts and Louise Glück was awake.
– At first I panicked, then I thought I was hallucinating. After that, I was incredibly honored. But I never thought they would give the award to a white American poet. I told the permanent secretary of the Academy on the phone and he replied that they were sorry that I was white and American, but that they simply could not ignore my poems.
Louise luck föddes 1943 in New York and grew up on Long Island. Father Daniel Glück, the son of Hungarian immigrants, was a successful businessman, his mother had a university degree in languages. Glück’s own interest in language and literature was born early and was encouraged by his parents.
During her adolescence she became ill with anorexia, has described eating disorders as a result of an attempt to free herself from her mother and has also said that it was through psychoanalysis that she recovered.
After studying at the University of Colombia, among other places, he made his debut in 1968, at the age of 25, with the collection of poems “Primogénito”. Since then he has published a dozen titles, both poetry and essays. Three books have been translated into Swedish: “Ararat”, “Averno” and “Wild Iris”.
His poetry has been described as centrally lyrical and existentialist; often in dialogue with Greek mythology.
In response to the question of whether she herself experiences that there are themes that she constantly returns to in her writing, a laugh comes first. Then he clears his throat and says:
– Mortality, the fact that we are going to die. But it is clear that all my books are different. I don’t want to group them together, no writer wants that. I want my books to be like an adventure, for me and for the reader.
Stewe Claeson has been translating her poetry since the 1980s, describing Louise Glück as shy.
– You don’t work with Louise Glück, you know? I first published it in an anthology in 1981 and since then I have only seen it twice at twenty-year intervals. However, we exchange letters regularly, in fact, I received a couple of new poems from her just a couple of days ago.
Of the American poets living today, only she and possibly Robert Hass reach the level that TS Eliot and the others once did.
Photo: Susan Walsh
Louise Glück works every day as a professor of English at Yale University. Among students, she is known as a dedicated, sometimes demanding teacher. “If I have a gift as a teacher, it comes from a genuine curiosity and admiration for my students,” she told the Yale Daily News student newspaper.
The American poet Elisa González has had Glück as a professor at Yale University, today she is a mentor. She describes how Glück taught her as a “transformative experience”.
– She completely changed my vision of poetry and writing. During his lessons, which typically lasted three hours, we typically discussed only three poems, leading to the discussion deepening at a certain point when all the obvious things had been said. He always tried to get to the very essence of a poem, analyze its problems and its strengths. She never wanted to do what was expected or obvious, and encouraged the rest of us to think the same, González says.
Louise Glück has been married twice, just became a grandmother to two twins but lives alone. He lives his life with friends, at least he did before the pandemic. In recent months, they have been able to meet again for a bite to eat at an outdoor cafe. But soon it will be too cold for that.
– With those I like, I am very sociable. The pandemic has made my life very lonely, like so many others, and it has dulled my brain, sometimes it has felt completely dead in my head. That I have managed to finish writing a book this year is quite incomprehensible. There is usually a festive event when I finish, so it hasn’t been this time.
A total of eleven Americans have been assigned Nobel Prize in Literature. Most recently, it was Bob Dylan who received the award in 2016. And the last time it was awarded to an American woman was 27 years ago when it went to Toni Morrison.
For the prize money, 10 million kronor ($ 1.1 million), Louise Glück hopes to be able to buy a small place, perhaps a country house, in Vermont, where she spent a long time growing.
– The pandemic has made me want a home in nature, a place where I can retire and feel safe. I also want to buy a really nice coat. Somewhat conceited, a Comme des Garçon.
Earlier this year, he received the Tranströmer Prize, which is awarded to poets who work in the spirit of Tranströmer. Louise Glück had planned to come to Sweden to receive the award and participate in the ceremony at the Västerås concert hall, but the award ceremony was canceled as a result of the pandemic.
The Nobel Banquet will not end either.
-I’m really sorry about that. The Nobel party is such an impressive event and I would have loved to sit at that table and meet the members of the Academy. Now what worries me the most is what will happen with the speech, it is very nervous to have to write prose like that.
The Swedish Academy and the Nobel Prize have been hotly debated in recent years, have you followed that debate?
– Not.
So you don’t know the criticism from the Swedish Academy?
– Hmm, now that I have been appointed, they will probably receive even more criticism.
It is sometimes said that the Nobel Prize for Literature can be like a death blow to a writer. Some of those who have received it have complained, experienced that they cannot or do not have time to write after receiving the award. Louise Glück knows this and is scared.
– In fact, I’m afraid that I will fall from the prize, too much attention can make one feel a little bored or groggy. And since this call, I don’t know what to do with all the calls. I’ll probably have to turn off the phone.
Read more:
Poet Louise Glück receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
Louise Glück’s odds fall rapidly hours before the announcement
Louise Glück year after year
