Série Women who made history in Literature Louise Gluck

“The great thing

is not having

a mind. Feelings:

oh, I have those;

they govern me.”

Louise Gluck

The motivation for her prize was “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” And we from Livr(a) couldn’t agree more.

Louise Gluck is the deserving winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2020, and we couldn’t be happier to have another fantastic woman having her work recognized by this significant award!

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Born in New York in 1943, this 77-year-old poet attended Columbia University and is still teaching Poetry at Yale. For her, poetry and originality come from living an authentic life, as she said in an interview for the Writer’s magazine some years ago, “your work will come out of an authentic life, and if you suppress all of your most passionate impulses in the service of an art that has not yet declared itself, you’re making a terrible mistake.” As a poet and a teacher, she knows how life can be the source of real art.

Louse Gluck is the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize and the first American to win one in 26 years. Before her, the incomparable Toni Morrison took the prize in 1993.

Don’t know Louise Gluck’s work? Check out some of her great quotes.

“We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”

“The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.”

“Why love what you will lose?

There is nothing else to love.”

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