Louise Glück

Louise Glück (1943- ) was born in New York City, and grew up on Long Island. The recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, Glück was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999. In the fall of 2003, she was appointed as the Library of Congress’s twelfth poet laureate consultant in poetry. She served as judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets from 2003 to 2010. And The Wild Iris (Ecco Press, 1992) received the Pulitzer Prize. Glück is the Frederick Iseman Professor in the Practice of Poetry at Yale University.

Autumn

How heavy my mind is,

filled with the past.

Is there enough room

for the world to penetrate?

Stars gleaming over the water

The leaves piled, waiting to be lit.

Insight, my sister said.

Now it is here.

But hard to see in the darkness.

You must find your footing before 

you put your weight on it.

— Louise Glück