Louise Elisabeth Glück, born in New York City on April 22, 1943 and raised on New York’s Long Island, is an American poet and essayist. On October 8, 2020, Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” She has become a winner of many major literary awards in the United States, such as the National Humanities Medal, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize, to name a few. Louise Elisabeth Glück became Poet Laureate of the United States from 2003 to 2004. Often described as an autobiographical poet, Glück’s work is famous for its emotional intensity and for frequently drawing on myth, history, or nature to meditate on personal experiences and modern life. Now Glück is an adjunct professor and Rosenkranz Writer in Residence at Yale University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In her work, Glück has focused on illuminating aspects of trauma, desire, and nature. In exploring these broad themes, her poetry has become known for its frank expressions of sadness and isolation. Scholars have also focused on her construction of poetic personas and the relationship, in her poems, between autobiography and classical myth.
