Louise Gluck has been no stranger to awards over her long and storied career since her first publication in 1968. In 1993, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poems, The Wild Iris. And on Oct 8 (2020) she became the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature with the Nobel prizes first awarded in 1901.
Gluck was honored “for her unmistakable poetic voice that, with plain and simple beauty, makes individual existence universal”. Often said to be an autobiographical poet, drawing from the inner parts of her life, "Gluck seeks the universal, Nobel Committee Chair Anders Olsson said in a statement.
Gluck, 77, the author of 12 poetry collections, has been able to turn her life experiences into universal themes covering life, loss, and isolation. Because of this, readers have often found her poetry to be "dark". However, there is much more than darkness in her voice, as noted by Olsson. "It is candid and also a voice full of humor and biting wit." he said.
For example, in her poem Snowdrops, she uses the coming of spring after winter to show rebirth of life after death. She leads readers down a depressing path only to reconnect with the light at the near end. At the conclusion of the poem, readers are left to feel the "raw wind of the new world" as they watch a new spring. This is often the case in Gluck's poetry, being able to feel joy even after not having done so for a long time.
When her work Faithful Virtuous Night received a National Book Award for Poetry in 2014, a judge for the award went on to say, the collection comes from "a world where darkness blurs (模糊) ordinarily sharp edges around the oppositions of our lives - loss and renewal, male and female, the living and the dead".
Talking of prizes, she acknowledged that they can make "existence in the world easier" but did not amount to the immortality (永生) of a true artist. "I want to live after I die, in that ancient way." she said. "And there's no way of knowing whether that will happen, and there will be no knowing, no matter how many blue ribbons have been used to cover my body." The remark is in line with Olsson's description of Gluck's poetic voice as "candid and uncompromising” but frequently witty.
