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February 10, 2004
Poet Glück
will guide, inspire students in
fall
Staff
Reporter
Gluck, a Pulitzer Prize winner, will join the Yale English Department as Rosencranz writer-in-residence for a five-year renewable term beginning next fall. She will teach one introductory and one advanced poetry workshop next year.
"I don't know Yale all that well, but I'm very hopeful. I've seen a lot of colleges I haven't felt quickly responsive to. The ones that are different stand out because they're very few. Yale is one of them," Gluck said.
English professor Leslie Brisman quoted one of Gluck's poems to express how happy he felt about Gluck joining the English department faculty.
"I feel about Louise Gluck coming to Yale what she herself says in 'Vita Nova': 'Life is very weird, no matter how it ends / very filled with dreams,'" Brisman said. "This move is one of my dreams."
Gluck -- whose name is pronounced "glick" -- said that as poetry professor she tries to teach her students to 'follow their noses' and keep pursuing a particular field of interest for sources of inspiration.
"It's really important to not disregard your passions, your leanings," Gluck said. "If you want to watch videos, watch videos. You don't know really, or determine, what will feed you."
Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead said he attended Gluck's last public appearance on campus in 2002, when she participated in a symposium featuring the nine recipients of the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, an award given to honor a poet's lifetime achievement.
"The new poem she read on that occasion was as powerful a reading as I have ever experienced," Brodhead said.
Although as Poet Laureate she holds the highest national honor bestowed on a poet, Gluck, 60, said she still likes to make time for the simple joys of cooking, going to the gym and simply thinking.
"I read a lot of detective fictions. I stare at a lot of walls. There's a lot of unused, wasted time, but I think there's some importance in that," she said.
English major David Gorin '04 said he owns seven of Gluck's books and is currently "obsessed" with "Meadowlands," a poetry anthology that Gorin explained uses the points of view of characters from "The Odyssey" to portray the breakdown of a nuclear family.
"She manages to turn autobiography into art by chiefly using mouthpieces," Gorin said. "Her poetry is probably the most emotionally raw out of any contemporary poet that I know of."
Gluck said what she enjoyed most about holding the title of Poet Laureate was the opportunity to bestow gifts of $10,000 to two young, rising poets. She said she also liked gaining a sense of the newest trends in literature by sharing her opinion on written works for the Yale University Press.
"You find some manuscript that seems radiant and alive; it pleases me profoundly to help such a book into print," Gluck said.
Gluck, who battled severe anorexia in her youth, said her illness has influenced, but not dominated, her writing.
"The impulses that produced anorexia as a symptom are evident in my work. Do I write about anorexia? Rarely and only once directly," she said.
Gluck said while growing up, she never imagined making her living as a poet. But she knew she would continue writing, even through the hard times, she said.
"I try to teach my students the kind of patience that will help them survive periods of silence and stretches of bad work," Gluck said.
Brodhead said Gluck will return to campus to conduct a poetry reading April 26.
Copyright © 1995-2003 Yale Daily News Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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August 29, 2003Pulitzer Prize-winner Louise Glück named poet laureate
Librarian of Congress James Billington announced the appointment Thursday.
Gluck (pronounced glick) has been an English professor at Williams College for 20 years. She has published nine volumes of poetry and in 1993 won a Pulitzer for "The Wild Iris." Her latest work, "October," is due this fall.
Gluck, who shuns publicity, said her first undertaking in her new position will be "to get over being surprised." Then she will concentrate on promoting young poets and poetry contests, she said.
"Her prize-winning poetry and her great interest in young poets will enliven the poet laureate's office," Billington said.
Born in New York, Gluck studied at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College, and earned a law degree from Williams College. She lives alone in Cambridge, Mass., and commutes 150 miles when teaching at Williams.
Gluck said she doesn't believe the poet laureate must create new programs. The incumbent, Billy Collins, started a Web site to furnish a poem a day for high school students. Gluck said a project to record Americans' favorite poems, begun by her friend and former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, could be taken further.
Gluck's poetry often deals with women's problems and can be dark and foreboding. Loss and isolation are common themes.
"Writing is not decanting of personality," she wrote in 1994 at the start of a volume of essays called "Proofs and Theories." "The truth, on the page, need not have been lived. It is, instead, all that can be envisioned."
Asked for a sample of her work, she suggested five lines from "The Seven Ages," published in 2001:
"Immunity to time, to change. Sensation
Of perfect safety, the sense of being
Protected from what we loved
And our intense need was absorbed by the night
And returned as sustenance."
The one-year poet laureate's job includes an office at the Library of Congress, a $35,000 salary and an obligation to deliver and organize readings. Previous poets laureate include Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks and Rita Dove.
Glick, who is divorced and has a grown son, will take up her duties in the fall, beginning with a reading from her work on Oct. 21.
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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