Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Louise Glück

Quote by Louise Glück

Work

The First Four Books of Poems

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Louise Glück
Louise Glück

Louise Glück (born April 22, 1943) is an American poet and essayist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020. Born in New York City to Hungarian Jewish immigrants, she developed a passion for poetry early in life. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. Glück's poetry is known for its precise, austere language and deep psychological insight, often exploring themes of family, love, death, and nature. Her major works include 'The Wild Iris' (1992), 'The Seven Ages' (2001), and 'Faithful and Virtuous Night' (2014). She has received numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award, and served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2004. Her works have been translated into many languages and have had a profound impact on contemporary poetry. more

You May Also Like

“If you live your life to please everyone else, you will continue to feel frustrated and powerless. This is because what others want may not be good for you. You are not being mean when you say NO to unreasonable demands or when you express your ideas, feelings, and opinions, even if they differ from those of others.”

“The Angles Of The Frame 1 Many years have passed since the day, I looked into a mirror, saw a wrinkled face. I've been disclosed to the bulging sands of my bed. 2 Aeons of breath account for the many veins in my atrium. 3 The bull I breast-fed for many years And I've submerged into the frame. 4 I knew the justifications were hard, Hard as against the current of water. No news from the ambiguous points something uncommon. It can't be justified by natural rules, many years we've been tangled on it. 5 This usurped land is a part of all buried treasure islands No finger points in any direction. Lost in the dead-end alleys Tracing images without a compass. 6 Horse pounding pulse sing endlessly in my blood. My kinsmen of horses… Blood-line linked as to rays of a circle like roots of a tree growing deep on the roof. 7 You can't stop the hands of the clock. You can't come back to the broken minutes. The days have been arranged one after another. The knights have left the game one after another. 8 There was a straw mat where you fell asleep. I became numb, quite used to the stillness of the house. 9 Was something supposed to get away from the core to join us? A century has passed and we still live in this house. 10 Dimensions have shifted Not exclusive to the roof The letters approved us as the residents of the house They ran away as the convicts And we got used to the standstill. (Translated from original Persian into English by Rosa Jamali)”

“Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost keys, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I hate it all. Even now, when I have done so much of it, when I live, as the saying goes, in my boxes. Even to-day, when shutting drawers and flinging wide a hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, is a methodical matter of routine, I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, however brief the time. Though two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not a hair-pin on a dressing-table, not an empty bottle of aspirin tablets, not a handkerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood.”