Best of - Louise Glück: Revenge Against Circumstance

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Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Louise Glück, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, uses simple, unsentimental language in her poems to evoke overwhelming emotions. That rare combination is what has distinguished her as one of America's greatest living poets for over half a century. In addition to the Nobel Prize, she has also been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and is former Poet Laureate of the United States. In this episode, Glück (pronounced glick) digs into the torment and uncertainty that has hounded her throughout her writing life. She talks about how teaching poetry, which she feared would diminish her art, instead allowed it to flourish. And she describes her obsessive desire to hear music in her ears, and language in her head. This episode originally aired in July, 2017. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2017-2020

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Alice here.
0:05.0	This was an especially proud week around the Academy of Achievement Headquarters.
0:13.0	Two esteemed members who've been featured on what it takes
0:17.0	became Nobel Prize winners.
0:19.0	The first was Jennifer Dowdna, the scientist who, along with Emmanuel Sharpentier, developed CRISPR,
0:27.1	a method of editing DNA that has thrown wide open new doors for the treatment of disease.
0:33.9	We congratulate these two women, these pioneers who are sharing the Nobel in chemistry.
0:39.9	Our episode with Dr. Dowdna posted in October of 2019 and there's a lot of wow in it
0:46.1	so please make sure you take a listen. The other what it takes guest we are raising
0:51.3	a glass to today is poet Louise Glick who's just won the
0:56.2	Nobel Prize in literature. The Swedish Academy in their announcement described
1:01.2	her as having an unmistakable poetic voice that with austere
1:06.7	beauty makes individual existence universal. In her honor we are replaying our episode here, which originally ran in the summer of 2017.
1:19.0	Enjoy.
1:20.0	I write to discover meaning. I want experience to mean something. It's less a matter of
1:31.0	who I am, then that idea that nothing should be wasted.
1:37.0	The something must come of it.
1:40.0	And writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too. Bad luck, loss, pain. If you make
1:50.8	something out of it then you've no longer been bested by these events.
1:57.0	That is Louise Glick, one of America's preeminent poets.
2:05.0	And just to clear this up before I go any further,
2:08.0	you might think of her as Louise Glock.
	...

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