Louise Glück

We were saddened to learn that American poet and essayist Louise Glück (April 22, 1943 – October 13, 2023) passed away on October 13 at the age of 80.

Glück is often described as an autobiographical poet; her work is known for its emotional intensity and for frequently drawing on mythology or nature imagery to meditate on personal experiences and modern life.

When she won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, the judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal".

The Past

Small light in the sky appearing 
suddenly between 
two pine boughs, their fine needles 

now etched onto the radiant surface 
and above this 
high, feathery heaven— 

Smell the air. That is the smell of the white pine, 
most intense when the wind blows through it 
and the sound it makes equally strange, 
like the sound of the wind in a movie— 

Shadows moving. The ropes 
making the sound they make. What you hear now 
will be the sound of the nightingale, Chordata, 
the male bird courting the female— 

The ropes shift. The hammock 
sways in the wind, tied 
firmly between two pine trees. 

Smell the air. That is the smell of the white pine. 

It is my mother's voice you hear 
or is it only the sound the trees make 
when the air passes through them 

because what sound would it make, 
passing through nothing? 

--Louise Glück