Louise Glück - Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://www.achievement.org:80/achiever/louise-gluck/","20181024085943","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1540371583"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <title>Louise Glück - Academy of Achievement</title>  <meta name="description" content="Louise Glück is "a strong and haunting presence" among America's greatest living poets. Her work is distinguished by a rare ability to deploy ostensibly simple language to evoke powerful emotion. While many of her poems clearly address the challenges of life and love in the contemporary world, they are at times informed by the themes and landscapes of classical mythology. She has published twelve volumes of verse to date, including The Seven Ages, Vita Novo, Triumph of Achilles and Averno. Her book The Wild Iris received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has since received virtually every other major award for poetry, including the Bollingen Prize in 2001 for her lifetime achievement. In 2003, she was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States. Born in New York City, she began writing at an early age. She studied at Sarah Lawrence and Columbia University, and although she never took a degree herself, she has spent much of her life teaching in universities. For 20 years, she taught at Williams College in Massachusetts. She now teaches in the creative writing program at Boston University and is the Rosencranz Writer in Residence at Yale University. Her 2009 book, A Village Life, is a collection of dramatic vignettes of everyday life in an unnamed Mediterranean community, where an ancient way of life, governed by the seasons, is gradually giving way to the pressures of modernity. The first 50 years of her work have been collected in a comprehensive volume, Poems 1962 - 2012."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Louise Glück - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">Louise Glück is "a strong and haunting presence" among America's greatest living poets. Her work is distinguished by a rare ability to deploy ostensibly simple language to evoke powerful emotion. While many of her poems clearly address the challenges of life and love in the contemporary world, they are at times informed by the themes and landscapes of classical mythology.</p> <p class="inputText">She has published twelve volumes of verse to date, including <i>The Seven Ages</i>, <i>Vita Novo</i>, <i>Triumph of Achilles</i> and <i>Averno</i>. Her book <i>The Wild Iris</i> received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has since received virtually every other major award for poetry, including the Bollingen Prize in 2001 for her lifetime achievement. In 2003, she was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.</p> <p class="inputText">Born in New York City, she began writing at an early age. She studied at Sarah Lawrence and Columbia University, and although she never took a degree herself, she has spent much of her life teaching in universities. For 20 years, she taught at Williams College in Massachusetts. She now teaches in the creative writing program at Boston University and is the Rosencranz Writer in Residence at Yale University. Her 2009 book, <i>A Village Life</i>, is a collection of dramatic vignettes of everyday life in an unnamed Mediterranean community, where an ancient way of life, governed by the seasons, is gradually giving way to the pressures of modernity. The first 50 years of her work have been collected in a comprehensive volume, <i>Poems 1962 - 2012</i>.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/gluck-Feature-Image.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">Louise Glück is "a strong and haunting presence" among America's greatest living poets. Her work is distinguished by a rare ability to deploy ostensibly simple language to evoke powerful emotion. While many of her poems clearly address the challenges of life and love in the contemporary world, they are at times informed by the themes and landscapes of classical mythology.</p> <p class="inputText">She has published twelve volumes of verse to date, including <i>The Seven Ages</i>, <i>Vita Novo</i>, <i>Triumph of Achilles</i> and <i>Averno</i>. Her book <i>The Wild Iris</i> received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has since received virtually every other major award for poetry, including the Bollingen Prize in 2001 for her lifetime achievement. In 2003, she was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.</p> <p class="inputText">Born in New York City, she began writing at an early age. She studied at Sarah Lawrence and Columbia University, and although she never took a degree herself, she has spent much of her life teaching in universities. For 20 years, she taught at Williams College in Massachusetts. She now teaches in the creative writing program at Boston University and is the Rosencranz Writer in Residence at Yale University. Her 2009 book, <i>A Village Life</i>, is a collection of dramatic vignettes of everyday life in an unnamed Mediterranean community, where an ancient way of life, governed by the seasons, is gradually giving way to the pressures of modernity. The first 50 years of her work have been collected in a comprehensive volume, <i>Poems 1962 - 2012</i>.</p>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Louise Glück - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/gluck-Feature-Image.jpg"/> <script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20181024085943\/http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"WebSite","@id":"#website","url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20181024085943\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/","name":"Academy of Achievement","alternateName":"A museum of living history","potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20181024085943\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/search\/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}</script> <script 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class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Louise Glück</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Poet Laureate of the United States</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-2401 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-author careers-poet"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="banner clearfix"> <div class="banner--single clearfix"> <div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2"> <div class="banner__image__container"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <img class="lazyload banner__image" data-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/WhatItTakes_gluck_256-190x190.jpg" alt=""/> </figure> </a> </div> <div class="banner__text__container"> <h3 class="serif-3 banner__headline"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> Listen to this achiever on <i>What It Takes</i> </a> </h3> <p class="sans-6 banner__text m-b-0"><i>What It Takes</i> is an audio podcast on iTunes produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: music, science and exploration, sports, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance — bad luck, loss, pain.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Pulitzer Prize for Poetry</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> April 22, 1943 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_9906" style="width: 2225px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-9906 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/glu0-006-gluck.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-9906 size-full lazyload" alt="Louise Glück photographed early in her career as poet and educator. (Library of Congress)" width="2225" height="2552" data-sizes="(max-width: 2225px) 100vw, 2225px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/glu0-006-gluck.jpg 2225w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/glu0-006-gluck-331x380.jpg 331w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/glu0-006-gluck-663x760.jpg 663w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/glu0-006-gluck.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Louise Glück photographed early in her career as poet and educator. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)</figcaption></figure><p>Louise Glück was born in New York City and raised on Long Island. Her father, Daniel Glück, an immigrant from Hungary, was a successful businessman who helped develop and market the familiar household X-Acto Knife. The members of the family pronounce their name as “Glick.”</p> <p>From an early age, Louise was deeply moved by language and narrative, an enthusiasm her parents encouraged. In her teens she was already submitting verses of her own composition to magazines and publishers. She graduated from high school in Hewlett, New York in 1961.</p> <p>A troubled adolescent, she was diagnosed with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. She overcame these difficulties through psychoanalysis, a process she recalls as, “…one of the great experiences of my life. It helps me to live and it taught me to think.” She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University but left without taking a degree. At Columbia’s School of General Studies, she took night classes with the poets Léonie Adams and Stanley Kunitz, teachers she credits with helping her find her own voice.</p> <figure id="attachment_7534" style="width: 1076px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-7534 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Stanley_Kunitz_Bernard-Gotfryd%E2%80%94Hulton-Archive_Getty-Images.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-7534 size-full lazyload" alt="Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006) served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress in 1974, and again in 2000. He taught Louis Glück at Columbia University in the 1960s. (Photo by Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images)" width="1076" height="1600" data-sizes="(max-width: 1076px) 100vw, 1076px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Stanley_Kunitz_Bernard-Gotfryd—Hulton-Archive_Getty-Images.jpg 1076w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Stanley_Kunitz_Bernard-Gotfryd—Hulton-Archive_Getty-Images-256x380.jpg 256w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Stanley_Kunitz_Bernard-Gotfryd—Hulton-Archive_Getty-Images-511x760.jpg 511w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Stanley_Kunitz_Bernard-Gotfryd—Hulton-Archive_Getty-Images.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006) served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress in 1974. He taught and was a mentor to Glück at Columbia University in the 1960s.  Glück credits Kunitz with “helping her find her own voice.”</figcaption></figure><p>Her first published collection of poems, <em>Firstborn</em>, appeared in 1968. In the book, she assumes a variety of first-person voices, all angry or alienated. Some critics and readers were unsettled by the harsh tone of the poems, but more were impressed by the originality and skill of her poetic technique. Although the language of her poems, then and now, is direct and colloquial, she made fluent use of the traditional tools of rhyme and meter. The critical success of the book, which won the Academy of American Poets’ Prize, led to offers to teach in college writing programs, but Glück turned these offers down, fearing that a teaching job would distract her from her writing. She tried to support herself with secretarial work while concentrating on her poetry, but following her first book she experienced a profound writer’s block and considered giving up writing altogether.</p> <figure id="attachment_7538" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-7538 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_GettyImages_111819190.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-7538 size-full lazyload" alt="Louise Glück reads her work at a 1968 gathering in the home of famed novelist Norman Mailer. (Photo by Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="3363" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_GettyImages_111819190.jpg 2280w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_GettyImages_111819190-258x380.jpg 258w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_GettyImages_111819190-515x760.jpg 515w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_GettyImages_111819190.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Louise Glück reads her work at a 1968 gathering in the home of famed novelist Norman Mailer. (Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>She was living in Provincetown, Massachusetts, when she was invited to attend a writers’ gathering at Goddard College in Vermont. She agreed to attend, hoping to meet one of her literary heroes, the poet John Berryman. Glück fell in love with the atmosphere of rural Vermont and, encouraged by other writers she met there, decided to look for teaching work after all. Rather than inhibiting her creativity, as she had feared, she found the experience of teaching an exhilarating one and felt inspired to write again. Over the next decade she would teach at a number of colleges and universities including Goddard College and the University of Iowa.</p> <figure id="attachment_39401" style="width: 1877px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-39401 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wild-iris-book-cover.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-39401 lazyload" alt="" width="1877" height="2747" data-sizes="(max-width: 1877px) 100vw, 1877px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wild-iris-book-cover.jpg 1877w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wild-iris-book-cover-260x380.jpg 260w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wild-iris-book-cover-519x760.jpg 519w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wild-iris-book-cover.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1992: Louise Glück’s Pulitzer prize-winning collection, <em>The Wild Iris,</em> is a long-form, book length poem. Set in a garden and written in three voices: flowers speaking to the gardener-poet, the gardener-poet, and a god figure.</figcaption></figure><p>Her second book, <em>The House on Marshland</em>, appeared in 1975. As in her first, she assumed a number of personae, including Joan of Arc, a favorite character of Glück’s childhood. The use of historical figures such as St. Joan — as well as characters from fairy tales, from the Bible and from classical mythology — would remain a defining characteristic of her work throughout her later career.</p> <p>Over the course of her career, Glück would sometimes experience periods of intense productivity followed by months or even years of creative inactivity. Her third book, <em>The Garden</em>, followed within a year of her second, but her next book, <em>Descending Figure</em>, did not appear until 1980.</p> <figure id="attachment_39400" style="width: 1853px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-39400 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vita-nova-book-cover.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-39400 lazyload" alt="" width="1853" height="2741" data-sizes="(max-width: 1853px) 100vw, 1853px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vita-nova-book-cover.jpg 1853w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vita-nova-book-cover-257x380.jpg 257w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vita-nova-book-cover-514x760.jpg 514w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vita-nova-book-cover.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1999: Louise Glück’s <em>Vita Nova</em> is a book of deaths and beginnings, resignation and hope, brutal, luminous, and farseeing. <em>Vita Nova</em> earned Louise Glück the prestigious Bollingen Prize in Poetry from Yale University in 2001.</figcaption></figure><p>In 1983, she accepted a lectureship at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, a post she would hold for the next two decades. She taught for one semester a year, making the three-hour trip once a week from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the week, she stayed with a family in Williamstown, returning to Cambridge for the weekends. Her next book, <em>The Triumph of Achilles</em> (1985), continued her use of mythological themes and characters and showed a marked unity of subject matter from beginning to end. The book was well received and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry.</p> <p><em>Ararat</em> (1990) marked a significant transition in Glück’s work. Rather than merely collecting poems written on diverse themes and occasions over a given period of time, <em>Ararat</em> represented a sustained portrayal of a given set of characters, three women dealing with the death of a husband and father. Although the book received some indifferent reviews at the time, it won the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress and has since become one of her most admired works.</p> <figure id="attachment_7540" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-7540 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1104.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-7540 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1104.jpg 2280w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1104-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1104-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1104.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Louise Glück addresses the Academy delegates at 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C.</figcaption></figure><p>The 1990s would prove to be one of the most acclaimed and productive decades of Glück’s career. In 1992 she published one of her best-loved books, <em>The Wild Iris</em>. The 54 poems in the book were written in only ten weeks and follow the progression from spring to late summer in a New England garden. <em>The Wild Iris</em> received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, as well as the award of the Poetry Society of America, a prize named for a favorite poet of Louise Glück’s, William Carlos Williams. <em>The Wild Iris</em> was followed within a year by <em>Mock Orange</em>. In 1994 she also published her one prose collection, <em>Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry</em>. The success of <em>The Wild Iris</em> increased demand for Glück’s earlier works, and in 1995 an edition of <em>The First Four Books of Poems</em> appeared.</p> <p>Her 1997 book, <em>Meadowlands,</em> juxtaposes the Homeric tale of Odysseus, Penelope, and their son Telemachus with a modern tale of marriage and divorce. The title alludes to both the sports stadium in New Jersey and the traditional setting of pastoral poetry. Louise Glück has never sought publicity, and has always been reticent about discussing her personal life, but many readers saw this book as a response to the end of Glück’s marriage, her second, and its effect on her and her son.</p> <figure id="attachment_7541" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-7541 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck-award.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-7541 size-full lazyload" alt="wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck award" width="2280" height="1620" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck-award.jpg 2280w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck-award-380x270.jpg 380w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck-award-760x540.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck-award.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Louise Glück receives the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement from Awards Council member Dr. Susan Hockfield, President Emeritus of MIT, during the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington.</figcaption></figure><p><em>Vita Nova</em> (1999) takes it title from Dante and links the poet’s experience of loss and recovery to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In 2000 Louise Glück received the coveted Bollingen Prize for Poetry, awarded every two years by Yale University. The same year she began a three-year term as a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress for its bicentennial observances. She continued to write at a steady pace, publishing <em>The Seven Ages</em> in 2001.</p> <p>The year 2003 was a momentous one for Glück. After 20 years at Williams College, she accepted an appointment as Rosencranz Writer-in-Residence at Yale University. In August she was named by the Library of Congress to serve a one-year term as United States Poet Laureate. A poem in six parts, <em>October</em>, was published in one volume towards the end of the year.</p> <figure id="attachment_7535" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-7535 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Louise_c_Wolkoff.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-7535 size-full lazyload" alt="Poet Louise Glück, 2013. (Steven Barclay Agency )" width="2280" height="1710" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Louise_c_Wolkoff.jpg 2280w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Louise_c_Wolkoff-380x285.jpg 380w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Louise_c_Wolkoff-760x570.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Louise_c_Wolkoff.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2013: Poet Louise Glück, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 2015 National Humanities Medal.</figcaption></figure><p>Glück’s tenth book of verse, <em>Averno</em> (2006), takes its name from a lake in southern Italy, which the ancient Romans believed was the entrance to the underworld. Her interest in the history and culture of the Mediterranean continues to inform her work. Her 2009 book, <em>A Village Life,</em> chronicles the life of a small town in an unnamed Mediterranean country, as a traditional way of life, tied to the rhythms of nature, gradually gives way to the pressures of modernity. <em>A Village Life</em> won some of the best reviews of Glück’s career and confirmed her reputation as a major voice in American letters.</p> <p>Five decades of her work were gathered in her <em>Collected Poems 1962-2012</em>. She continues to reside in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and to teach at Yale University. She is in demand as a public speaker, and reads her work to appreciative audiences across the United States.</p> </body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 2012 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.poet">Poet</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.author">Author</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> April 22, 1943 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">Louise Glück is “a strong and haunting presence” among America’s greatest living poets. Her work is distinguished by a rare ability to deploy ostensibly simple language to evoke powerful emotion. While many of her poems clearly address the challenges of life and love in the contemporary world, they are at times informed by the themes and landscapes of classical mythology.</p> <p class="inputText">She has published twelve volumes of verse to date, including <i>The Seven Ages</i>, <i>Vita Novo</i>, <i>Triumph of Achilles</i> and <i>Averno</i>. Her book <i>The Wild Iris</i> received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has since received virtually every other major award for poetry, including the Bollingen Prize in 2001 for her lifetime achievement. In 2003, she was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.</p> <p class="inputText">Born in New York City, she began writing at an early age. She studied at Sarah Lawrence and Columbia University, and although she never took a degree herself, she has spent much of her life teaching in universities. For 20 years, she taught at Williams College in Massachusetts. She now teaches in the creative writing program at Boston University and is the Rosencranz Writer in Residence at Yale University. Her 2009 book, <i>A Village Life</i>, is a collection of dramatic vignettes of everyday life in an unnamed Mediterranean community, where an ancient way of life, governed by the seasons, is gradually giving way to the pressures of modernity. The first 50 years of her work have been collected in a comprehensive volume, <i>Poems 1962 – 2012</i>.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/P1rpGy8XRzU?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=3007&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_01_57_24.Still001-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_01_57_24.Still001-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Pulitzer Prize for Poetry</h2> <div class="sans-2">Washington, D.C.</div> <div class="sans-2">October 27, 2012</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>We’ve read that you were drawn to poetry at a fairly young age and that you felt almost a sense of companionship in the poetry of William Blake and others.</b></span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/pZNYqBPZfKY?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_43_33_11.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_43_33_11.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Louise Glück: I learned to read very early, very young, and my father was fond of writing doggerel verses. So the children, the two of us, we started writing books very early. He would print them out and we would illustrate them, and many times the text was in verse. But I started reading poems that I found. I remember my grandmother, who wasn’t a bookish woman, had a tiny little anthology — it was physically a small object, as I remember — of “Beloved Poems,” or some sort of comprehensive title of that kind. And I remember reading Blake’s “Little Black Boy,” and I remember reading the song from <i>Cymbeline</i>, “Fear No More the Heat of the Sun.” And I must have been five years old — four years old — little. But I heard those poems. I often didn’t know — with Blake’s poem I knew, obviously, nothing of the historical background of the poem — but the cry from the heart to my ear, <i>that</i> I could hear. And I thought, “These are the people I am speaking to, and this is why my everyday life is such a catastrophe.”</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_39403" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-39403 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wp-2280-GettyImages-635752823.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-39403 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3048" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wp-2280-GettyImages-635752823.jpg 2280w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wp-2280-GettyImages-635752823-284x380.jpg 284w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wp-2280-GettyImages-635752823-569x760.jpg 569w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wp-2280-GettyImages-635752823.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Léonie Adams was an award winning American poet. In 1948, she was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Adams was a teacher of English at a number of different American colleges and mentored up and coming young poets such as Louise Glück. At 18, Louise Glück enrolled in poetry workshops at Columbia University’s School of General Studies, first with Adams, and then for five years with Stanley Kunitz.</figcaption></figure></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y0txSmXAHzM?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_34_18_10.Still003-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_34_18_10.Still003-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">I remember, a little later than that, having in my mind a sort of private crucial competition for the greatest poem ever written, of course based on the sample I had then read.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And the finalists were Blake’s “Little Black Boy” and “Swanee River.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And if you think about it, they’re tonally very alike.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The same solitary voice raised in lament, essentially, and grief.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That tone reached me very quickly.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The songs from the plays of Shakespeare were very different.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Many times I didn’t understand some of the words and had no idea what need they filled in the play.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I don’t even think I knew that they were parts of plays.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But I read them hypnotically.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Even after I had memorized them, I kept reading them.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p class="p1">As I got older I read constantly. Much fiction, which I still read to divert myself, to be happy.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>When I want to be happy, I read a novel.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>But in my early teens and mid-teens, I would just read, deep into the night, all those poets who were commonly anthologized. I came from a family committed to education, but not particularly literary.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>My father’s interest was much more in history and government.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>My mother liked the arts, but I wouldn’t say she was informed or a tremendous judge.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>But they were very pleased with my early sense of vocation.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>There was a tremendous parental support for that.</p> <figure id="attachment_7536" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-7536 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Gluck.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-7536 size-full lazyload" alt="Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück" width="2280" height="2324" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Gluck.jpg 2280w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Gluck-373x380.jpg 373w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Gluck-746x760.jpg 746w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Gluck.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück is also the recipient of the Bollingen Prize for Lifetime Achievement.</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How early did you feel that sense of vocation?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s2">Louise Glück: Bizarrely early.</span></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q_YP_zcfm4s?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=115&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_27_05_12.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_27_05_12.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">It was one of those sort of child dreams that oftentimes gets knocked out of the child and replaced by something else, sometimes something equally grand.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Well, from the time I had that little poetry competition in my head between “Swanee River” and “Little Black Boy,”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I always<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>knew that what I wanted was to write.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And I digressed occasionally.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There was a period in which I wanted to be an actress, which I later realized was simply that I wanted to be applauded.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I had no gift for theater at all. I had a good memory.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I could memorize lines, but I was a very wooden performer.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I was cleaving so hard to an evolving self, the idea of subordinating that self to a role was completely impossible.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>My mother, with whom I was often at war in that period, kept saying, “Darling, darling, it’s such a shame you want to be an actress, because you’re such a fine writer and painter.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And she left the rest unsaid and that made me more stubborn.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But that was very brief. And then I went back to what I dreamed of.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I didn’t know what you did to become a writer with a book.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But I wrote poems from the time I was in my early, early teens.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I submitted my first book when I was 13 or 14.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was, of course, sent back.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And poems to magazines.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And I persisted.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_3642" style="width: 1680px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-3642 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1101.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-3642 size-full lazyload" alt="Former Poet Laureate of the United States and Academy honoree Louise Glück addresses the student delegates and members at the Hay-Adams Hotel during the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C." width="1680" height="1120" data-sizes="(max-width: 1680px) 100vw, 1680px" data-srcset="/web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1101.jpg 1680w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1101-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20181024085943im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1101-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1101.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Former Poet Laureate of the United States and Academy honoree Louise Glück addresses the student delegates and members at the Hay-Adams Hotel during the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C.</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>A moment ago, you referred to your everyday life growing up as a catastrophe. In what sense?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Probably a fairly ordinary sense in many ways.</span></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181024085943if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/H06yJn-mkVc?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_10_43_27.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Gluck-Louise-2012-MasterEdit.00_10_43_27.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">I was not a successful adolescent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I seemed strange to the other children and they were nasty to me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I became quite withdrawn and then I became severely anorexic, which is why I was taken out of high school, even though my plans for myself were all intellectual. I thought, “I’m going to be an artist and I’m going to be naturally a professor.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But the professor part happened in a sort of back-door way.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was a very, very, very important event for me, because it got me into psychoanalysis, which became important to my thought.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I feel as though I learned how to think in psychoanalysis.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And I recovered a self that could be in the world.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Have you ever looked back and wondered what that was about? The anorexia and these other difficulties?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Oh, sure. Of course. </span><span class="s1">Very complicated and probably not a subject for this inquiry. But obviously a sort of repudiation of my mother, whose will was overpowering, and whose sense of ownership of her young was very intense. I needed a way of pushing her away. And I also found unnerving the idea of beginning to have a body that was differentiated from other bodies. I wanted to be a pure soul, and I thought, “This is the most amazing strategy. I will become a pure soul. I will liberate myself from the constrictions and earthliness of flesh.” It was a great plan. The problem was that you die of it. And when I realized that, there was nothing in me self-destructive. I was trying to create a self. I just chose badly and I was awfully lucky that I had an analyst gifted enough to talk me down off the tree branch.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I started taking poetry workshops at that time, in night school at the School of General Studies, which was thrilling. So I had a world of people interested in what I was interested in. And I worked very hard. </span><span class="s1">I had amazing teachers — very, very good at drawing out of quite disparate talents what was native to them. First, Léonie Adams, who used to smoke about eight cigarettes at a time. One would be burning its way toward her fingers and we’d all watch mesmerized to see if the ash would fall. Then she’d put it down and start another and there were these cigarettes burning all over the room. She was not a poet whose work I particularly revered — in fact, I didn’t know it until she became my teacher — but she was a very great teacher. She had about her an air of high seriousness and devotion that was attractive to me. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Stanley Kunitz the same. There was a sense of — you subordinated your ego to the needs of the poem. It was very attractive. And he didn’t teach it, but he manifested it, and we copied the idea of a kind of profound patience, and the capacity to be dissatisfied with something that one was doing for a very long time and still re-approach it. And also he taught — he somehow made clear — that we were going to need, besides patience, a very tough hide, because there are so many forms of humiliation. There’s neglect, which is the obvious one. There’s praise for characteristics that you think are not yours and that you deplore. To be praised for things that you deplore is quite punishing. There’s neglect, the kind that pats you on the head and moves onto the more interesting things. And all of it just cycles through. You ascend for a certain period. You can feel the pins moving on the board, and then all of a sudden there you are: target practice for people. And you have to just live through all of it, and not be destroyed.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Do you teach that to your students too?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: I try. I let them know that if they’re projecting onto me a kind of serenity of acknowledged accomplishment, that they’re quite mistaken, that that is not the experience of being in the world, and that it’s all struggle. The whole life is struggle and euphoria. And that’s why there’s daily life, which is an enormous consolation. You know, just the tasks of daily life: cooking dinner, gardening, going out with friends.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>It sounds like poetry can be a somewhat tormenting pursuit.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: It’s often a torment, a place of suffering, harrowing. Things aren’t going well, things aren’t going well, and then things are great. And then struggle again. There’s a period of kind of tranquility after some large thing has been completed. It’s that wonderful point — many people talk about this — the moment of having written. And you don’t have to do it for a while. It’s very lovely. But then there’s a sense of the strangest anxiety, but anxiety builds. The sense that an account must be invented. I still don’t completely understand that. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about all these issues and talking about them.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You mean, why you need to keep writing?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Yeah. Why? But I feel alive when I’m doing it and much less alive when I’m not doing it.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s2"><b>Joan Didion</b></span><span class="s1"><b> told us that she writes to understand who she is.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: I don’t know that I would put those words to it. </span><span class="s1">I write to discover meaning. I want experience to mean something. It’s less a matter of who I am than that idea that nothing should be wasted. Something must come of it. Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you’ve no longer been bested by these events.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You said you sort of stumbled into teaching when you were having some tough periods of writing.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Yeah. It was a miracle. It was one of the greatest gifts of my life. </span><span class="s1">I had long thought that to be an artist involved — and I think there’s writers who make this case — the repudiation of the world. You channel all of these vital energies into only this one thing. You’re not distracted by pleasure or ordinariness. You don’t do any job that would use those same pieces of your mind. And that was, to me, temperamentally congenial. Repudiation was something I was very good at. So I lived in my 20s mainly fending off — not experience, because it was a time of great love affairs and so on — but professional work of a kind that would, I thought, draw on my vital juices. I was a secretary, which did not do that. But my writing life at that point was spent sitting in front of a piece of white paper at a typewriter completely paralyzed. And I would think, “I’ve got to write something,” and I would write “the” and then push really hard and “tree” would come out. But everything was dead. I had exhausted a mode of writing in my first book. I had no new sound to make. You had to hear first a message from the ear, a kind of sound, a phrase. I had nothing to go on. And I kept doing less and less, because I thought I wasn’t sacrificing enough, I wasn’t renouncing enough. Finally it occurred to me that I wasn’t going to be an artist, that this dearest wish of my heart would not be answered, and I thought I’d better think of something to do.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I had had offers of teaching jobs, one-semester, year-long things, based on my book. I’d turn them down because, “Poets shouldn’t teach.” I don’t know how I knew that. I don’t know where that came from, but it was a conviction. It was basically a sentence. A nervous sentence that began “Poets shouldn’t…” and then you could fill in any blank that was serviceable at the time.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I was invited to go to Vermont to take part in a colloquium, and John Berryman was among those invited, and he was a hero. I wanted to meet him. And the minute I got to Vermont, I felt, “I’m supposed to live here.” And I had never had that feeling. Home to me wasn’t where I grew up, Long Island. It certainly wasn’t New York City where I then lived. And then it emphatically wasn’t Provincetown, where I lived for two years and was living at the time. But I got to Vermont, and I thought, “This is where I’m supposed to be.” And the people who were my hosts taught at Goddard College, a hippie institution back then. They kept saying at the parties during the colloquium, “You should come here and teach.” And finally I had an epiphany, and I said, “Yes.” I was so naive in this regard, I didn’t think that these English — I didn’t realize they weren’t empowered to offer me a job — they were just being pleasant. We were all liking each other. But I became then quite committed to the idea. And four days before the semester started, a job was found. One-semester deal. I moved to Vermont. I moved into a rooming house with a bathroom down the hall on what passed in Vermont for a highway, just maybe three-quarters of a mile from the school. And the minute I started teaching I became happy. I was happy in Vermont. My intuition was right. I think I know why, but teaching released me. It was one of the most dramatic transformative experiences of my life and entirely positive. I mean, having a baby was something like that, but it initially was terrifying and horrible. But this was simply — I loved what I was doing. I found my students fascinating, gifted. I was not much older than they were. I started writing. I started writing with a fluency I had never experienced.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What year was this?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Gosh, late ’60s, early ’70s. It was before <i>The House on Marshland</i>. I started writing the poems that were in that second book, which are, I think, the first real poems I wrote, that weren’t just formal practices. That feeling about teaching has been constant. I still love teaching and I still love my students. Some of my students have gone on to very great careers of different kinds, which especially pleases me when we’re talking about undergraduates. There’s a poet named Claudia Rankin — brilliant, brilliant poet — who was in the first class I taught at Williams. I’ve known Claudia since she was 20 years old.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So there’s not a sense of rivalry or competition? You feed each other in a way?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: They’ll make me a better writer. They will. If they’re making discoveries, they’re hearing sounds I can’t hear — and reading their work I begin to hear — because there’s still lots that I can do for them. But I get excited by the freshness of their minds. There are a number of people my own age who have done or are doing extraordinary remarkable work. But I feed more on the young because of the sense of — the sounds they’re making are different — new — new to my ear.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Didn’t you once apologize to a former student because you thought you had learned too much, or taken something from him?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Oh, no. It wasn’t a former student. </span><span class="s1">One of the things I did later was I started editing a “first book” series, which was a discovery akin to teaching for me. I would get these cartons with a hundred and something books — finalists. And some of the judges for these competitions would ask to read ten books. I wanted to see everything that had, in the idea of the readers — screeners — some merit. And I copied a design Michael Collier had put in place for the Bakeless Prize — which I judged one year — of having the judge choose younger poets who would screen. And it’s terrific, because you have people then reading these books and making judgments about what to pass on, who are people whose sensibilities you trust. So when I started doing this for the Yale Younger Poets Prize, before I was a teacher at Yale, I had young poets screening for me. And I discovered in these boxes great artists. I mean, phenomenal artists. One of them was Peter Streckfus, whose rhythms and constructions were deeply in my mind. And I realized that I felt I was ripping him off. I went back and reread the book — this was some years afterward — and none of his language was — I mean, it wasn’t, but I knew where I had gotten what. I knew that I had gotten where I was because of him. And I called him, and I said, “I feel I must apologize. I hope that you don’t feel that these poems that I am writing are your poems.” And I said, “I checked,” and I said, “there’s no duplication of phrasing or even meter. I mean, they’re different, but I know.” And he said, “Oh, this is wonderful, Louise. This is what should be between poet, that there’s a kind of active cross-pollination.” I don’t know that I would be so generous. I’m very custodial. If I see a phrase of mine in someone else’s poem, I’m not happy. I want to write a letter to the editor — “I wrote that!” — but I don’t.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>In one of your interviews you said that you don’t particularly have a sense of acclaim. That’s amazing when you look at the recognition you’ve received, the Pulitzer Prize and all of the major awards that you’ve won as a poet. Do they not sink in or is it just a temporary thing?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: I’m proud of them. And grateful. Very grateful. It’s helped me a lot. It makes my salary higher. </span><span class="s1">The Bollingen (Prize) means something. That meant a lot, and I felt proud. But the problem is, if you get a prize and you’re not writing anything, or you’re writing stuff that seems so bizarre that you don’t know what to make of it, then your feelings about yourself as an artist are completely driven by, “Are you still an artist?” — that query, and the fact that you have been, or once were, or, “That book was good, but what have you got to show for yourself now?” The discrepancy is sometimes very painful. And a lot of prizes — the judges are just human beings and they have agendas and they have feuds and they have loyalties. If you know something about the world, it’s very — I’m sure this is true in other fields — you can see that so-and-so is getting this because the judge is actually ferociously jealous of someone else who properly should have gotten it. Nasty businesses like that. So worldly honor makes existence in the world easier. It puts you in a position to have a good job. It means that you can — or you could in a different economy — charge large fees to get on an airplane and perform. And for all that I’m very grateful. But as an emblem of what I want? What I want is not capable of being had in my lifetime. I want to live after I die in that ancient way. And there’s no knowing whether that will happen, and there will be no knowing, no matter how many blue ribbons I have plastered to my corpse.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What about the concept of a muse? Do you have any relationship with that word at all?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Well, I hate the word, but it’s true that something sometimes visits and other times doesn’t. I wish I felt otherwise, but I feel as though there has to be some catalyst, some inspiration. All of a sudden there’s a phrase in your head. Where does that thing come from? I don’t know, and because I don’t know, I don’t know how to have more of them.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What do you hear in such a phrase? Is there a power to it?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Sometimes there’ll be lines in my head for two years before I know how to use them. I don’t know in what context what I hear can be liberated. So initially, they seem a great gift, because you have these two beautiful lines. And then they become a torment, because you have these two beautiful lines that aren’t in themselves a poem, and you have no idea what kind of house to build for them, around them. There have been periods in my life when my first thought in the morning has been that piece of language, my last thought at night the piece of language. But it’s like a whip. It’s a punishment, because I can’t do it. And then in each of those cases, ultimately I could write a poem that made a world. And every so often — after I was 50 I started writing books very rapidly. This happened in maybe four or five books. <i>The Wild Iris</i> was written — except for about five poems — it was written in six weeks, eight weeks. <i>Vita Nova</i> the same. <i>The Seven Ages</i> was written in something like six weeks. Just like four or five poems a day. And then the day before you start you’re a complete blank, and then all of a sudden six weeks later you have a book. And then you’re very tired and you get sick. And then some of the other — <i>Village Life</i> was different. <i>Averno</i> was written in two halves, the first kind of slow, dogged, hopeless. Then a hiatus of about two years, and then two years later the second half. Very fast. And then <i>Village Life</i> was sort of ideal. It was a steady writing for about a year, and a sense of great curiosity and contentment and richness, without any of the tempestuousness of that very rapid, “you give up sleep” thing. I know — I know it sounds like something that should be medicated, but it doesn’t feel like mania to me. It’s very specific to this one event. Anyway, it’s certainly not going on now.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What is not going on now?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Writing at that kind of volcanic speed.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You must need to put a lot of trust in your muse, or your inspiration, whatever you call it.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: I think what I feel is trust in my editorial capabilities. I know that if I get something on the page, I can do something with it. I’ll know what to do. But yeah, I do. My bedtime story when I was very, very little, my father used to tell my sister and me the story of St. Joan, without the burning. And you know, she heard voices and I was very accustomed to the idea that one heard voices. I hear language. It’s not like an angel speaking to me, but language comes, and I don’t know how to control it, but I’m very grateful when it happens. I’ve never felt that I’ve been wrong about one of those little gifts. But then, a lot of what I do is not — it doesn’t come about that way. It’s a sort of “one poem leads to the next” in unexpected ways. But when some switch has been flipped and you’re in the “on” mode, and then you’re off. And every time it’s off, you feel as though this is the true silence. This is the end of all speech. It’s a horrible feeling, and it still dogs me. I’ve been talking a long time right now, for example.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You’ve said that music can play a role in writing your books. How does that happen?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: I start listening to something obsessively, and I do that even when I’m not writing. I tend to have something that I need to hear.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Is it a certain kind of music?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: It varies a lot, but mainly classical, mainly opera or song. This is my favorite of these stories, when I was first writing “Averno.” It was a poem I was working on, a sort of September 11th poem in multi-parts. I knew how I wanted the poem to feel because I’d been reading a murder mystery by Reginald Hill called <i>On Beulah Heights</i>. I read a lot of murders. The heroine of the book, you encounter her first as a child, and then she becomes a singer. She wants to do her own translation of <i>Kindertotenlieder</i>. The translation starts to weave through the text and it’s hypnotic. And that sound, Hill’s libretto that his heroine contrives, drilled itself into my head. It was in my head when I was working on these poems. I showed one of them to my friend Frank Bidart, who’s a very good reader, and he said, “You’ve been listening to <i>Das Lied von der Erde</i>.” And I said, “No, but I’ve been reading Reginald Hill on <i>Kindertotenlieder</i>. And he said, “You sound like Mahler.” And I said I didn’t have the music. I would never listen to <i>Kindertotenlieder</i> because it has such bad karma.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Songs of dead children.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Well, everybody who had anything to do with it lost a child. I couldn’t afford that. But <i>Das Lied von der Erde</i>, Frank said, “We have to get you the record.” And we got a beautiful recording. I started listening to it and —</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Which recording? With Kathleen Ferrier?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Yeah. I have some others too, but that’s the one that I mainly listen to. I felt that that music was showing me how to write this book. Even the poems that don’t sound anything like it. And so I listened to <i>Das Lied von der Erde</i> all the time when I was home, every day, nothing else. And then I finished my book and now I can’t listen to it because I’ve over-listened. Years will have to elapse. There was a kind of correspondence that a good reader could pick up on.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">With <i>The Wild Iris</i> I spent two years listening to <i>Don Giovanni</i>. Truly nonstop, which may have been hard on my family, because I was living with a kid and a husband at the time. And my only reading was flower catalogues. I was getting really passionate about the garden and I was writing nothing. And I thought — two years, two and a half years — I thought, “No wonder you can’t write anything. All you do is listen to Mozart and read about begonias.” What do you expect? And finally I thought — I didn’t know what to do, and I was walking in the garden and doing a little desultory reading, and I thought, “Well, I’ll try to write a poem spoken by a flower.” And immediately I thought — well, within two days, when I wrote another — I thought, “This — — I know what I’m doing.” And it was still <i>Don Giovanni</i> and the flower catalogues, but all of a sudden they’d fused into this form. But there was no sense building up to it of anything but a tragic falling off of original potential.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>It seems like music provides an unconscious route to accessing your creativity.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Yeah, but it has to connect to some preexisting neural code. Because not every piece of music does it. And then there’s music that I listen to obsessively that doesn’t do it. I spent a lot of time listening to Sam Cooke’s <i>Song Book</i> and that was all I could listen to, but it didn’t turn into poems and books, or it hasn’t yet.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>A lot of scientists we’ve interviewed say there has to be failure in the laboratory in order for there to be success. Is that true in creative work as well? In poetry?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: I would say that not writing for two years is a very deep experience of failure. But I don’t know that it’s essential. I just know it’s my experience. It’s hard to say what’s essential. You tend to make a sort of case study of yourself, and the things that have been true of your life you generalize. But I can’t say that that kind of impossibility — that sense of stagnation and silence — I can’t say that they’re crucial. They seem to be what happens to me. I think, if failure and success are having to do with what the world says, that’s a whole other thing. There have been books I have been very — that I think of as among my best — that have been reviewed scornfully and deplored.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>For example?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: <i>Ararat</i>. Now people fetishize it. You know, if they like my work, they’ll say, “Ah, <i>Ararat</i>. High point.” But at the time, where were they then? Not writing poetry reviews, that’s for sure.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You’ve written some essays about poetry. Have you thought about writing more prose, or even fiction?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Never fiction. Fiction, for me, is like cooking. It’s pure pleasure. I don’t want to sully it by involving myself. And I don’t think I’m a storyteller. I like writing essays. It seems I have to be angry at something to write an essay. Though I’ve now written ten extended forewords, introductions to books by young writers. And I have about five or six other essays unpublished. I feel as though the balance is wrong. I don’t see a book in that. But I would like to write another prose book.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Whenever I’m working on an essay, I’m usually in a fairly good mood, the way you’re in a good mood when work is regular, and you’re thinking, and you have a desk and it has paper in it, and there’s words on the paper, and you go back to the paragraph before, and you take up the thread. That’s just lovely. But I don’t have any ideas for an essay now, and maybe I won’t write any more of them. The forewords kind of knocked me out. It was the only part of the judging that was really hard because I wanted to do — I wanted to do right by these poets. I wanted to say what was, about them, so distinctive and unique and important. And to do that year after year after year is very hard to even isolate. It’s easier to do it when you don’t like something, because all the reasons for your not liking something are immediately available to you. But when you like something, the vocabulary becomes very reductive. Things like “Wow!” “Lord!” “God!” Exclamatory and brief remarks don’t make a foreword. And that’s why a lot of these forewords that people write just say things like “Another important voice in American poetry.” Really? What kind? What sets it apart?</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Do you read poetry for solace, or are there poets you keep going back to for different reasons?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Reading poetry for me is so complicated now. I mean, if I love something, it makes me want to jump off a roof. If I don’t, I get enraged, not fruitfully. I tend to read fiction for solace. There are poets I never tire of. George Oppen, for example. Some of my early favorites. William Blake. I like austere language. But there’s some poets I love and can’t read anymore. Emily Dickinson is like chalk on a blackboard, or fingernails on a blackboard, whatever that figure of speech is.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Isn’t she also kind of terrifying?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: That doesn’t bother me. I like to be terrified. No, it’s not that it’s too harrowing or too scary. It’s the sort of insane maiden lady sound — kittenish. But she was one of my great heroes early on.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What about Yeats?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: He’s a very great poet, but do I read him regularly? No. When I read the poems, I think they have that feeling of having always been in the language. They’re gorgeous. I don’t like stadium poetry. I like, “Come closer, let me whisper in your ear.” Eliot or some perfect, strange thing like Robinson Jeffers’s short poems — “Vulture” — just great. But I read poems a lot of the time just because of how I live. I see a lot of them. I read a lot of poem books, some of which I think are brilliant. And I read a lot of work by young poets because it keeps me alive.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>One would think that it would be very hard to teach or work with a young poet who’s saying, “Here’s how to do it better,” or “Here’s how to do it right.” I guess that also gets to the question of what poetry is.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: Well, you’re not doing anything like that. You’re trying to get the feeling of, “What is this?” What is the originality you feel on the page, if there is any. </span><span class="s1">If someone’s really a beginner, then you simply try to isolate the moments when the poem seems alive, as opposed to inert. You know, if you can see from the first line where it’s going, and then it goes there, it’s a dead thing. It takes you nowhere you don’t know already. And if it does so in elegant metaphors, so what? This poem has already been written 3,000 times. But when you see something that is unprecedented, and if you can show the person that. So that’s one level of teaching, but then once people become really artists — young artists, but artists — it’s not doing it better according to some formula. It’s, “Where does the poem wilt a little?” Where is it the most conventional or generic, and can that moment be addressed and reinvented, so that that taint of the generic will be forever obliterated? It’s that that you try to do. It’s a fascinating problem, and different for every poem. To try to feel out what separates this from a memorable work of art, and how could it become that memorable work of art? It’s what you do on your own work too, but it’s the same thing with theirs, only they’re making a different kind of poem, a different kind of sound. It looks different on the page. Their concerns are different. So imaginatively, you enter the universe of that poem. And, in a way, you do that when you read great work. But there’s something wonderful about having that kind of immersion when the thing is still malleable. It’s thrilling, and poems can be transformed. And the students, of course, or young writers, get very excited when that happens. But every one of those books that I chose — and then sometimes worked on with the people — had different strengths, different problems. They were each utterly unique. Jay Hopler is nothing like Peter Streckfus, and neither of them is anything like Richard Silken. All those books had different problems.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Is creativity something that we all have and that can be fostered? In a certain sense, could we all be poets? Not Pulitzer Prize-winning poets, but is there poetry in everyone, do you think?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: I have no idea. I teach the people who come to me, and they come to me because they want to write poems. I think probably every 21-year-old has ten poems to write. What makes a poet is not just talent. It’s hunger, and it’s a hunger so profound and unkillable that it keeps you going for 50 and 60 years. You can’t know of a young writer if that hunger exists, and will it survive being mutilated, pissed on. There’s a mixed figure for you! You don’t know that. But you try to give them the skills that would be of use were that to happen.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What advice would you give to a young person who wants to write poetry?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Louise Glück: The same that anyone would say: Read poetry. Read. Keep yourself open to alternatives. But I think the problem with the question is that really it depends on the person. So your answer will be, to some extent, based on your perception of that person’s capacity. And hunger. And psychology. Some people are already reading so much that to tell them to read more, their voices will be drowned. They already are going to read more. They’re going to read every waking hour. So you remind them to live in the world. Actually that is something that I do say, because…</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Sometimes people have in mind the kinds of renunciations I practiced myself, and instinctively am drawn to. Women who say they’re not going to have children, they’re not going to have professions, they’re not going to go to law school, they’re not going to go because they want to just write poems. And I think your poems — the ones that are yours and not skillful clones of existing poems — will come about through your having lived the life that most closely enacts your own passions. And if you spurn them, you’ll never write. I mean, you may write, but you won’t make anything. So I push them toward “yeses,” maybe more than I should.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>That was very interesting. Thank you. It’s been great talking to you.</b></span></p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Louise Glück Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>13 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71052631578947" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck-award.jpg" data-image-caption="Former Poet Laureate of the United States Louise Glück receives the Academy's Golden Plate Award from former MIT President Dr. Susan Hockfield at the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C." data-image-copyright="wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck award" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck-award-380x270.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1594_gluck-award-760x540.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1104.jpg" data-image-caption="Former Poet Laureate of the United States and Academy guest of honor Louise Glück addresses the student delegates and members at the Hay-Adams Hotel during the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C." data-image-copyright="wordpress_Academy_1104" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1104-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Academy_1104-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3126079447323" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_AP.jpg" data-image-caption="Louise Glück, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2003-04. (Library of Congress)" data-image-copyright="wordpress_AP" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_AP-290x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_AP-579x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4757281553398" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_GettyImages_111819190.jpg" data-image-caption="Louise Glück reads her work at a 1968 gathering in the home of author Norman Mailer. (Photo by Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Louise Gluck Gives Poetry Reading" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_GettyImages_111819190-258x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_GettyImages_111819190-515x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2957746478873" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_glu0-010.jpg" data-image-caption="Léonie Fuller Adams (1899-1988), American poet, was one of the instructors at Columbia University who had a powerful impact on young Louise Glück. Adams served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1948. The position was expanded by act of Congress in 1985. Louise Glück would later hold this office, now known as Poet Laureate. (Library of Congress)" data-image-copyright="Miss Leonie Adams1959 Fellowship Awardphoto: Pach Bros., N.Y." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_glu0-010.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_glu0-010.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0187667560322" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Gluck.jpg" data-image-caption="Poet Louise Glück (Steven Barclay Agency)" data-image-copyright="wordpress_Gluck" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Gluck-373x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Gluck-746x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.75" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Louise_c_Wolkoff.jpg" data-image-caption="Poet Louise Glück, 2013. (Steven Barclay Agency )" data-image-copyright="wordpress_Louise_c_Wolkoff" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Louise_c_Wolkoff-380x285.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Louise_c_Wolkoff-760x570.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4872798434442" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Stanley_Kunitz_Bernard-Gotfryd—Hulton-Archive_Getty-Images.jpg" data-image-caption="Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006) served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress in 1974, and again in 2000. He taught Louis Glück at Columbia University in the 1960s. (Photo by Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="wordpress_Stanley_Kunitz_Bernard-Gotfryd—Hulton-Archive_Getty-Images" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Stanley_Kunitz_Bernard-Gotfryd—Hulton-Archive_Getty-Images-256x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_Stanley_Kunitz_Bernard-Gotfryd—Hulton-Archive_Getty-Images-511x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2991452991453" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips.jpg" data-image-caption="The visionary English poet and painter William Blake (1757-1827) exerted a powerful influence on young Louise Glück when she first began to write poetry. He is seen here in a portrait by his contemporary, Thomas Phillips." data-image-copyright="wordpress_William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips-293x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips-585x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="Poet Louise Glück addresses the Academy at the Top of the Hay." data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Poet Louise Glück addresses the Academy at the Top of the Hay.">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1101.jpg" data-image-caption="Former Poet Laureate of the United States and Academy guest of honor Louise Glück addresses the student delegates and members at the Hay-Adams Hotel during the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C." data-image-copyright="Poet Louise Glück addresses the Academy at the Top of the Hay." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1101-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1101-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3356766256591" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wp-2280-GettyImages-635752823.jpg" data-image-caption="Léonie Adams was an award winning American poet. In 1948 she was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Adams was a teacher of English at a number of different American colleges and mentored up and coming young poets such as Louise Glück. (Oscar White/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="wp-2280-GettyImages-635752823" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wp-2280-GettyImages-635752823-284x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wp-2280-GettyImages-635752823-569x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4643545279383" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wild-iris-book-cover.jpg" data-image-caption="1992: Glück’s Pulitzer prize-winning collection, "The Wild Iris" is her long-form, book length poem written in three segments, is set in a garden and in three voices: flowers speaking to the gardener, the gardener, and a god figure." data-image-copyright="wild-iris-book-cover" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wild-iris-book-cover-260x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wild-iris-book-cover-519x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4785992217899" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vita-nova-book-cover.jpg" data-image-caption="1999: "Vita Nova" earned Glück the prestigious Bollingen Prize from Yale University. "Vita Nova" is a book that exists in the long moment of spring, a book of deaths and beginnings, resignation and hope, brutal, luminous, and farseeing. It combines the ecstatic utterance of "The Wild Iris" with the worldly dramas elaborated in "Meadowlands."" data-image-copyright="vita-nova-book-cover" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vita-nova-book-cover-257x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vita-nova-book-cover-514x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" 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Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181024085943/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. 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