Louise Glück

Major Influences                  

Original Greek and Latin Source(s)       

Homer

Mediating Sources              

Homer

General Comment

Educated at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, and Columbia University, New York City. Taught at Williams College and Yale University and is based in Cambridge, Mass. In 1993 was awarded Pulitzer Prize for her collection The Wild Iris (Ecco Press, 1992). 10 collections of poetry (including Meadowlands, 1996, and The Triumph of Achilles, Ecco Press, 1985), and a volume of Essays (Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry, Ecco Press, 1994). A full bibliography is available on line at www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/gluCk/gluck.htm.

Meadowlands, from which the poems on this database are documented, is a book length sequence of 46 poems which charts the breakdown of a modern marriage, interwoven with poems drawing on figures and episodes from Homer's Odyssey to draw out themes and turning points (Penelope, Telemachus, Odysseus, the idea of nostos and associations with memory, longing, homecoming and reunion).