Grace Cavalieri Explores “The Exquisite Singularity of Louise Glück” in new Essay
Grace Cavalieri celebrates the life and work of the Nobel Prize winner in this new essay published by The Washington Independent Review of Books
Grace Cavalieri's newest essay from the Washington Independent Review of Books explores the enigmatic poet, former Poet Laureate, and recent Nobel Prize winner, Louise Glück.
Like so many other Poets Laureate, Glück appeared on Grace's podcast, The Poet and the Poem. You can read a transcript of that interview HERE.
An excerpt of Grace's essay is below. Read the full thing over on WIRoB's website. And make sure you pick up Other Voices, Other Lives from the ASP store. OVOL includes poetry, prose, and transcribed interviews with Poets Laureate from throughout Grace's long career in letters.
From 2003-2004, Louise Glück, winner of most major poetry awards, was poet laureate of the United States. Now, in another step forward for womankind, she becomes the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Yet Glück is not emblematic or representational of other women, nor other poets. She’s too distinct, diamond-cut, inimitable, and proves that what is written deeply in spirit can become the clarion voice for our time.
And, in fact, the Nobel Committee cites this, “the individual made universal,” in her award, proving what most poetry readers already knew: that Glück is the most sustained voice of our generation.
What is it about her writing, then? What is it to be fully human in language?
She memorializes loss, isolation, rejection in language never quite heard before. If we want to know the size and shape of human heartbreak, we read Glück. She uses ancient myths to write modern narratives — featuring symbolic figures like Joan of Arc, Gretel, and Ulysses — through which to speak of marriage, divorce, childhood, motherhood.
If ever proof were needed that art redeems, transcends, and saves, it is the voice of Louise Glück.
On despair, she said, “I only wished for what I always wish for. Another poem.” We could teach a course in philosophy using her lines. For instance, “Why love what you will lose. There is nothing else to love.”
A Short Thought on Grace’s Interview with Jorie Graham (by Writer, Nin Andrews)
Nin Andrews is a poet. Most recently of Miss August which is out now from the awesome Cavankerry Press and most notably of the collection, Why God is a Woman. Nin Andrews is also a fan of Grace Cavalieri’s interview with Jorie Graham which she recently extolled over on ITN.
Featured Audio: The 2019 Maryland Poet Laureate Reads her Poem “Work is my Secret Lover”
Governor Hogan recently announced Maryland’s ninth Poet Laureate to be the incomparable Grace Cavalieri. In his press conference regarding the announcement he touched on her “lifelong” dedication to poetry, and this precisely is one of those defining characteristics of a great artist. ASP celebrated this aspect of Grace in her Legacy Book, Other Voices, Other Lives which is an atemporal sampling of her entire career to now, from poetry to prose, from plays to interviews with US Poets Laureate. It should come as no surprise to Mr. Hogan nor the careful reader of her works then that she has an almost religious dedication and inescapable fascination with her art and its many ingredients. As you we shall hear, in her poem “Work is my Secret Lover,” Poetry is the muse.
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