The Jewish American poet Louise Glick won the Nobel Prize in Literature • Her poetry is characterized by thin images and dream-like aesthetics
Louise Glick
Photography:
IP
The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded today to the Jewish American poet and essayist Louise Glück, "for her unmistakable poetic voice ... whose austere beauty makes individual existence universal."
Glick will receive a prize of 10 million kronor ($ 1.1 million) from the Swedish Academy.
Since 2011, when the Swedish poet Thomas Trenström won the Nobel Prize, no Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to poets.
Glock is the only 16th woman to win this award, which has been awarded to 117 winners since 1901.
Glock was born in 1943 in New York to parents who were descendants of Jews from Hungary.
She grew up on Long Island and attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University in New York, but did not complete her studies.
Her first book, Firstborn, was published in 1968, and since then she has published more than a dozen poetry and essay files and won numerous awards that made her writing one of the most acclaimed poetic voices in the United States. Among other things, she received the American National Book Award for her book "Loyal and Virgin Night," the Pulitzer Prize for her book "Iris Haber," and the Bollingen Prize from Yale for her book "Vita Nova."
Cover of "Glossy Iris" by Glick (Carmel)
Glick's poems are confessions and autobiographical, and deal with issues that seem to be cut from familiar reality such as damaged relationships between men and women and between daughters and mothers, aging, trauma and loss, in seemingly accessible and clear language and close to everyday speech.
And yet, the clarity of her poems is deceptive.
Many critics have written about her poems that they tend to have a dense and precise structure of repetitions and gaps that give familiar themes compression and dreamlike aesthetic quality.
Many critics have pointed out that while the autobiographical anchor of Glick's poems invites readers to decipher the scene from which they were born and "resolve" their imaginary world, in practice the poems do not respond to this urge and must be read as coming out of a world of their own, remaining enigmatic and deciphered.
Although her poems are considered "thin" and "poor" in imagery and descriptive language, many of the poems use mythological archetypes, such as the songbook "Averno" which was published in 2006, which develops the myth of the Queen of Hades, Persephone.
Glick currently resides at Yale University in Massachusetts.
In Hebrew, her book of poems "Iris Haber" was published in 2012 by Carmel and translated by Maccabit Malkin and Yoav Vardi, and some of her poems were published in various newspapers and magazines, including "Helicon", "Oh!", "Where", "On behalf of".
The song "Shacharit" by Louise Glick was previously published in Hebrew in the magazine "Oh!", Translated by Nava Krasiner:
Shacharit / Louise Glick
wants to know how I spend my time?
I walk in the front yard, likening myself to a
herb.
Do you need a grasp,
I time and again Smasbt, upon Hbrcim, Tolst
Sbcim belonging to Tltn Marogot Hfrhim: thumb
I Mhfst hazard, Aizo conviction
Shii Istno, albeit Szh
not Ngmr, Lbhn
Cl Sbc for the sake of Halh
Hsimboli, and Bkrob Hkitz Aobr, Htzba Balim long ago Replaces,
always the sickly trees
go first, dying are
dyed a brilliant yellow and a few pink-
bellied birds.
Want to see the hands?
Emptiness now like his first daughter.
Or was the intention from the beginning to
continue without a sign?
