Poetry Salon with Claire Keyes Featuring the Work of Louise Glück

Poetry Salon with Claire Keyes Featuring the Work of Louise Glück

To attend via Zoom, please register in advance for this meeting here. No registration required for in-person attendance. 

On Thursday, February 16, the Poetry Salon will meet at the Abbot Public Library and via Zoom to discuss the poetry of Louise Glück, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020. She was born in New York City and raised on Long Island. Her father, Daniel Glück, an immigrant from Hungary, was a successful businessman who helped develop and market the familiar household X-Acto Knife. The members of the family pronounce their name as “Glick.” 

A resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Glück’s willingness to confront the horrible, the difficult, and the painful resulted in a body of work characterized by insight and a severe lyricism. The Nobel award cites “her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” Louise Glück has taught poetry at numerous colleges and universities, including Harvard and Yale. Her personae included historic and mythic figures such as Gretel and Joan of Arc. Her adoption of different perspectives became increasingly imaginative. Her exquisitely controlled language and imaginative use of rhyme and meter delighted others. 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. She served as judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets from 2003 to 2010. 

Please join Claire Keyes, Professor Emerita at Salem State University, from 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm on Thursday, February 16 for a stimulating session on Glück’s poetry, either in person at Abbot Public Library or via Zoom. To attend via Zoom, please register in advance for this meeting here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. All are welcome. 

Poetry packets are available near the library’s Main Desk or online here: Gluck poems – 2-16-23 Salon.

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