At a time when language is used to manipulate us in a time of isolation and uncertainty, Louise Glück’s Nobel Prize in Literature is a reminder that her work is a testament to the power of clarity and precision, says poet Richie Hofmann. Her poems are a lesson that suffering, oblivion, even death will not be the end of us.
At the end of my sufferingthere was a door. Hear me out: that which you call deathI remember.(“The Wild Iris”) Though the book was published in 1992, well before my students were born, and when I was only a small boy; it was speaking to us from beyond, from that timeless “elsewhere” that so many of Glück’s poems so crisply capture. Her poems are alert to human feelings, both ugly and exalted, and to our will to survival in the face of a world that would cut us down. Good poetry is not a place for easy consolations, for platitudes. Instead, poems can be a space where uncertainty and complexity commingle. When we needed her lessons — each of us uncertain of the future, isolated, terrified — Louise Glück has been a poet who could teach us that suffering, oblivion, even death would not be the end of us. One of her poems, “The Red Poppy,” asks us: Oh my brothers and sisters,were you like me once, long ago,before you were human? Did youpermit yourselvesto open once, who would neveropen again? Because in truthI am speaking nowthe way you do. I speakbecause I am shattered.(“The Red Poppy”) Readers and admirers of Louise Glück’s poetry are celebrating her work this week with a collective sense of pride and pleasure to see her considerable contributions so deservedly recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature. The last American woman to win the honor was Toni Morrison in 1993. But, in spite of the outpouring of joy on social media at this monumental public recognition of her artistry, Glück’s poems themselves are not bombastic or public facing.
