Bernell DorroughThe newly appointed Poet Laureate of the United States, Louise GlÂck, will be reading Thursday, April 8, at 8 p.m. in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building. She will also be giving a talk on the craft of poetry tomorrow at 8 p.m. in Hurst Lounge, located in Duncker Hall.
Critical opinion about GlÂck’s poetry is widely divided. Though most praise her use of the lyric form, others claim what she writes is too personal and cloying to have a universal impact. It appears she is one of those poets whom people either love or hate-and to inspire either reaction, to have people strongly react to her in either way, proves she is a poet to be read and heard.
GlÂck is the author of nine books of poetry, including her most recent, “Seven Ages,” published in 2001; “Vita Nova,” published in 1999 and that year’s New Yorker Book Award winner for poetry; and 1992’s “The Wild Iris,” which won both the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Pulitzer Prize. This fall, Sarabonde Books will be publishing in chapbook form her latest work, a six-part poem entitled “October.” She is also an established critic, having won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction for her “Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry,” so her talk about craft will probably have multiple dimensions-about the writing of poetry as well as the reading of it.
Louise GlÂck’s poems can seem larger than life-she adopts personae as widely dispersed as Hansel and Gretel, Odysseus’ wife Penelope, and a series of flowers-so hopefully her presence in person will be as well. If there’s one reading series event to attend this year, this is the one.