Meadowlands
Louise Glück sows the fertile subject ground of marital discord in harvesting this crop of gems. The poems zing back and forth as the verses alternate between man and woman. "Flaubert had more friends and Flaubert was a recluse" says he, followed by her response, "Flaubert was crazy; he lived with his mother," In one scene they argue over dead French writers; later they discuss football. Yet Glück's work is more than a series of barbs. She writes in the nuances and language of a marriage, laid out against the voices of Odysseus and Penelope.
About the Author
Louise Glück is one of America’s finest contemporary poets. In 2020 Louise Glück has become the first American woman to win the Nobel prize for literature in 27 years, cited for “her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”. Glück is the 16th woman to win the Nobel, and the first American woman since Toni Morrison took the prize in 1993. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Glück is a former Poet Laureate of the United States and the author of a dozen widely acclaimed books. Stephen Dobyns, writing in the New York Times Book Review, said “no American poet writes better than Louise Glück, perhaps none can lead us so deeply into our own nature.” Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Hass has called her “one of the purest and most accomplished lyric poets now writing.” Evocative and lyrically graceful, Glück’s work is noted for its emotional intensity and technical precision. Glück’s considerable accomplishments as a poet are apparent in her 2013 collected works, Poems: 1962-2012. She received the 2014 National Book Award for her most recent collection of poems, Faithful and Virtuous Night, and in 2015 received the National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her latest book of essays is titled American Originality.
