The poet Louise Glück, winner of the 113th Nobel Prize for Literature, long ignored in France but an essential figure on the American literary scene, died at the age of 80, we learned on Friday October 13. His disappearance was confirmed to the AP agency on Friday by his editor at Farrar, Straus
Beyond the Nobel Prize in Literature, Louise Glück has received major literary prizes, such as the Pulitzer for The Wild Iris (1992), the National Book Award for Faithful and Virtuous Night in 2014, or that of the Los Angeles Times in 2012, for Poems 1962-2012.
Louise Glück, born in 1943 in New York, made her debut in 1968 with Firstborn, quickly gaining access to the very closed circle of the most important poets of contemporary American literature. At the time of her world coronation, she had published twelve collections of poetry and several volumes of essays on poetry. “His works are characterized by a concern for clarity. Childhood and family life, the close relationship with parents and brothers and sisters, is a theme that remained central to her,” declared the Nobel Academy in 2020.
Averno (2006) was his masterful collection, a visionary interpretation of the myth of Persephone’s descent into hell in the captivity of Hades, the god of death. Another spectacular achievement emerges from one of his latest collections, Faithful and Virtuous Night. In French, the translation of this poet has remained confidential until now, due to lack of publication in volume. It is limited to specialized journals. She dedicated one of her poems to Joan of Arc in 1976.