Louise Glück
Louise Glück is an American poet who currently teaches at Yale University. Her accolades include earning the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Wild Iris, being appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003, winning the National Book Award for Poetry for Faithful and Virtuous Night in 2014, and receiving the National Humanities Medal in 2015 from President Barack Obama. She is the author of 17 collections of poetry and continues to write.
Conducted by phone and published 05/12/17
Conducted by phone and published 05/12/17
Howl: What is your writing process like?
Glück: It’s changed a lot over the years and I think that the main thing each person has to discover is how to address the anxiety that goes along with trying to write. There’s a terrible concern lest your gift has been entirely spent. Always there’s that concern. If you don’t write anything, you get frantic. And I spent part of my youth doing what I thought was the right thing for a person of ambition. I sat at a desk all day and I rejected, insofar as I could, the needs of the world. I repudiated anything I could repudiate. And I devoted myself to this act of consecration. But it made me more and more and more frantic and I wrote nothing. When I say I wrote nothing I don’t mean I wrote badly. I mean I wrote nothing for two years after my first book. And gradually I gave up hope and I took a job. I took a job as a teacher and that was miraculous. I spent all day sitting at my desk, or as much of the day as I could before work, and I lived in the world again. And I started to write. I trusted that ever since. I feel as though if it calms you down to sit at your desk, sit at your desk. But if it makes you frantic with terror, then you shouldn’t do it.
Howl: How would you describe your editing process?
Glück: I work on a poem night and day until I get it as far as I can get it. But each book is different. Each poem is different. Some poems take two years to write. Some books take six weeks to write. I work by longhand and typewriter. I work until I have something like a draft on my typewriter and then I reread what I’ve written and I find myself marking it up the way I would with one of my students. I think with my pen, in a way. Then I retype it.
I find that my fingers stumble when the writing stumbles. I tried to convince myself that something is finished and it clearly isn’t. So I just write and stare at it and change it and then I move a stanza. But some poems just come out seamless the first draft. That’s always a relief and a thrill, but that can’t be counted on. And laboring that way is completely absorbing. I’m always very grateful when I have something to write.
Howl: You mentioned a typewriter. What is it about a typewriter, specifically, you are attracted to with your writing?
Glück: Well, I don’t like computers. I don’t like screens. I came from a generation in which typewriters were what there was. And I became quite an expert typist. I loved the way the words printed themselves on the page. And I could see things typed that weren’t apparent in longhand. So I actually don’t have a computer. I have an iPad. I mean, it’s fun. I don’t write on it.
Howl: How do you know one of the poems you’re writing is finished?
Glück: There isn’t one answer because every poem is different. Sometimes you feel as though you can see where there is an infelicity. You can see where there’s something that doesn’t hold your eye, doesn’t have the excitement and freshness of the other moments of the poem. But there are times when you also think if there’s any way that I can think of to fix this. Is this going to have negative impact on the rest of the piece? And I show things to close friends who are stern and demanding readers and whom will say, “that word’s not right,” “these lines are in the wrong order,” or “this stanza’s opaque.” And you think about their reservations. You sometimes act on them.
Sometimes I have a very firm sense of it’s done, it’s done. Sometimes I think it might be done. But sometimes I think I can’t even tell whether it’s any good. I finish it and I think this could be marvelous or this could be absolutely humiliatingly dreadful. And that’s especially true if the style has changed, if you’re writing a poem of a different kind. Because your editing skills aren’t appropriate to the material yet.
Howl: You were talking about your ever-changing style. Where do you feel your poetry going now or in the near future? What kind of stylistic changes do you see right now?
Glück: Well, I’m working on new material...it seems like my last book’s sort of novelistic in the sense that there’s a single world that these poems describe or inhabit. But I don’t know in advance the attributes of that world. Moments come to me. I write them down. I walk around and I try to figure out who’s saying this and for what reason. And I would say, “I hope it’s different from my other books.” If it isn’t, I’ll be very sad and it will never be in print.
Howl: What was the inspiration for your latest book (Faithful and Virtuous Night, 2014, which earned the National Book Award for Poetry)?
Glück: Oh, Lord. I don’t know that you could call it inspiration in that it’s not a story like, “oh, I went for a walk in the place I used to live and I thought ‘why don’t I write a book about a male artist who’s got a work crisis.’” The book took five years. Most of the time it seemed as though I was working on a gigantic jigsaw puzzle and all I had was the outside. I had no idea what the book was about, if you could say there is such a thing. It took a very, very long time to finish.
The first couple of poems were a little bit on the lame side; if you took them out of context, they don’t look so wonderful. I felt also that they were a little bit familiar. They sounded like poems in my previous book and I wasn’t thrilled. But then, when they got attached to these long monologues, they changed. And I can’t say that it was a single inspiration after the fact. I could do a description of what I think the book attempts to achieve. You don’t design it and then write it. Or at least I don’t.
Howl: What excites you about contemporary American poetry and where it’s headed?
Glück: Oh, it’s never headed to one place and that’s what’s exciting. There’s a real diversity here and the language is constantly being reinvented. Forms are being reinvented. And then old forms are given new life. One of the things I love about teaching is I get to see poems that are still unfinished. They’re malleable. They’re capable of being changed, written by people of tremendous intelligence and hunger.
They sound different from my peers. They’re writing very different kinds of poems. But they’re not writing a uniformed poem, that is the poem of the moment. If they were, that would be a disturbing thing because it would seem overly determined. Art is always changing. That’s why it’s a place to spend your time. There’s aspects of it...the political aspects of it are disgusting, but that’s true in any world. But there’s real order and intention. Many, many different kinds.
Howl: Do you have any particular words of wisdom or advice specifically for high school students, as you work primarily with college students?
Glück: Yeah, but everybody was a high school student. Everybody was a child. Everybody was once unsteady and unsure. In fact, in this life you’re unsteady and unsure pretty much all the way through, as far as I can tell. I think, the more they read, the better. Take literature classes. Find teachers who excite you, make you want to know what they know. But mostly take teachers who are excited themselves.
And I think that literary magazines and reading groups and workshops...you know, for much of my life, or early in my life, I was always a member of the workshop. Never will your poems be read more closely than in that circumstance. And always somebody has some stern judgement that tends to make a poem more exciting, remarkable. But mainly write, read, expose yourself to other worlds in so far as you can. Don’t have an idea about what a poem can or can’t do.
Howl: What advice would you have for budding writers?
Glück: The same advice anyone would give: read, read, and read to fall in love. Don’t read the things you think you’re supposed to like. Read the things you love because those are the things that will feed you. That’s the most important thing. I think it’s a good thing to have elevated ambition. I mean no one wants to be the author of competent poems. You want to write poems or novels or plays that people will remember or deserve to be remembered, even if there aren’t any people left. But mainly just read.
And trust your hunger if what you’re wanting to do for a spell is read catalogues or read murder mysteries or watch television. That means your brain has to rest. Something is being accomplished without your volition or will. And I think that the very best writers honor these moments. It goes along with the “not sitting at the desk religiously even if it’s making you frantic with terror.”
The childish part of the mind that wants to do what it wants to do...you have to go along with it. You have to allow a spirit of play. Otherwise the work will be dead. It doesn’t ever get easy. There’s never been a period in my life when it was easy, except for a few weeks or maybe a day or so here and there. It’s hard, but there’s nothing more absorbing than working on a piece of writing. It’s just the most exciting thing I can think to do. And I wish I could do it every day, all the time.
Howl: What do you do when you get discouraged, when you feel that you can’t write any more?
Glück: Well that happens all the time. I try to recharge myself. I have dinner with friends. I do lowbrow things. I read prose because poetry is going to make me feel suicidal. I don’t mean literally, but it’s pretty despairing. You stay away from the form that’s causing you so much grief. And you just allow time to pass in the hopes that time will change you and change the situation. And in my experience so far, which is very long, that’s happened. But there’s a lot of silent periods for me.
And then I see that the books change so I kind of believe in them. I don’t believe in this sort of industrious quality that some younger poets advocate as though just working hard every day will get you what you need. If you live a long life, you’ll write so much no one will ever want to read your stuff because there will just be too much of it. At the same time, you have to sort of, in the larger sense, edit your output so that it represents the best of what you have. Anyway, some times are very hard and my best advice is to distract yourself because thinking about them is not going to help. But someone else can give you a completely different answer. But that’s my answer. That’s what I do.
POSTSCRIPT: Please tell your students, a postscript in neon letters, that there will always be rejection and slights: They'll need thick skins. Forever. The trick is to remain open to the criticism that will help -- also tell them it is worth it.
Glück: It’s changed a lot over the years and I think that the main thing each person has to discover is how to address the anxiety that goes along with trying to write. There’s a terrible concern lest your gift has been entirely spent. Always there’s that concern. If you don’t write anything, you get frantic. And I spent part of my youth doing what I thought was the right thing for a person of ambition. I sat at a desk all day and I rejected, insofar as I could, the needs of the world. I repudiated anything I could repudiate. And I devoted myself to this act of consecration. But it made me more and more and more frantic and I wrote nothing. When I say I wrote nothing I don’t mean I wrote badly. I mean I wrote nothing for two years after my first book. And gradually I gave up hope and I took a job. I took a job as a teacher and that was miraculous. I spent all day sitting at my desk, or as much of the day as I could before work, and I lived in the world again. And I started to write. I trusted that ever since. I feel as though if it calms you down to sit at your desk, sit at your desk. But if it makes you frantic with terror, then you shouldn’t do it.
Howl: How would you describe your editing process?
Glück: I work on a poem night and day until I get it as far as I can get it. But each book is different. Each poem is different. Some poems take two years to write. Some books take six weeks to write. I work by longhand and typewriter. I work until I have something like a draft on my typewriter and then I reread what I’ve written and I find myself marking it up the way I would with one of my students. I think with my pen, in a way. Then I retype it.
I find that my fingers stumble when the writing stumbles. I tried to convince myself that something is finished and it clearly isn’t. So I just write and stare at it and change it and then I move a stanza. But some poems just come out seamless the first draft. That’s always a relief and a thrill, but that can’t be counted on. And laboring that way is completely absorbing. I’m always very grateful when I have something to write.
Howl: You mentioned a typewriter. What is it about a typewriter, specifically, you are attracted to with your writing?
Glück: Well, I don’t like computers. I don’t like screens. I came from a generation in which typewriters were what there was. And I became quite an expert typist. I loved the way the words printed themselves on the page. And I could see things typed that weren’t apparent in longhand. So I actually don’t have a computer. I have an iPad. I mean, it’s fun. I don’t write on it.
Howl: How do you know one of the poems you’re writing is finished?
Glück: There isn’t one answer because every poem is different. Sometimes you feel as though you can see where there is an infelicity. You can see where there’s something that doesn’t hold your eye, doesn’t have the excitement and freshness of the other moments of the poem. But there are times when you also think if there’s any way that I can think of to fix this. Is this going to have negative impact on the rest of the piece? And I show things to close friends who are stern and demanding readers and whom will say, “that word’s not right,” “these lines are in the wrong order,” or “this stanza’s opaque.” And you think about their reservations. You sometimes act on them.
Sometimes I have a very firm sense of it’s done, it’s done. Sometimes I think it might be done. But sometimes I think I can’t even tell whether it’s any good. I finish it and I think this could be marvelous or this could be absolutely humiliatingly dreadful. And that’s especially true if the style has changed, if you’re writing a poem of a different kind. Because your editing skills aren’t appropriate to the material yet.
Howl: You were talking about your ever-changing style. Where do you feel your poetry going now or in the near future? What kind of stylistic changes do you see right now?
Glück: Well, I’m working on new material...it seems like my last book’s sort of novelistic in the sense that there’s a single world that these poems describe or inhabit. But I don’t know in advance the attributes of that world. Moments come to me. I write them down. I walk around and I try to figure out who’s saying this and for what reason. And I would say, “I hope it’s different from my other books.” If it isn’t, I’ll be very sad and it will never be in print.
Howl: What was the inspiration for your latest book (Faithful and Virtuous Night, 2014, which earned the National Book Award for Poetry)?
Glück: Oh, Lord. I don’t know that you could call it inspiration in that it’s not a story like, “oh, I went for a walk in the place I used to live and I thought ‘why don’t I write a book about a male artist who’s got a work crisis.’” The book took five years. Most of the time it seemed as though I was working on a gigantic jigsaw puzzle and all I had was the outside. I had no idea what the book was about, if you could say there is such a thing. It took a very, very long time to finish.
The first couple of poems were a little bit on the lame side; if you took them out of context, they don’t look so wonderful. I felt also that they were a little bit familiar. They sounded like poems in my previous book and I wasn’t thrilled. But then, when they got attached to these long monologues, they changed. And I can’t say that it was a single inspiration after the fact. I could do a description of what I think the book attempts to achieve. You don’t design it and then write it. Or at least I don’t.
Howl: What excites you about contemporary American poetry and where it’s headed?
Glück: Oh, it’s never headed to one place and that’s what’s exciting. There’s a real diversity here and the language is constantly being reinvented. Forms are being reinvented. And then old forms are given new life. One of the things I love about teaching is I get to see poems that are still unfinished. They’re malleable. They’re capable of being changed, written by people of tremendous intelligence and hunger.
They sound different from my peers. They’re writing very different kinds of poems. But they’re not writing a uniformed poem, that is the poem of the moment. If they were, that would be a disturbing thing because it would seem overly determined. Art is always changing. That’s why it’s a place to spend your time. There’s aspects of it...the political aspects of it are disgusting, but that’s true in any world. But there’s real order and intention. Many, many different kinds.
Howl: Do you have any particular words of wisdom or advice specifically for high school students, as you work primarily with college students?
Glück: Yeah, but everybody was a high school student. Everybody was a child. Everybody was once unsteady and unsure. In fact, in this life you’re unsteady and unsure pretty much all the way through, as far as I can tell. I think, the more they read, the better. Take literature classes. Find teachers who excite you, make you want to know what they know. But mostly take teachers who are excited themselves.
And I think that literary magazines and reading groups and workshops...you know, for much of my life, or early in my life, I was always a member of the workshop. Never will your poems be read more closely than in that circumstance. And always somebody has some stern judgement that tends to make a poem more exciting, remarkable. But mainly write, read, expose yourself to other worlds in so far as you can. Don’t have an idea about what a poem can or can’t do.
Howl: What advice would you have for budding writers?
Glück: The same advice anyone would give: read, read, and read to fall in love. Don’t read the things you think you’re supposed to like. Read the things you love because those are the things that will feed you. That’s the most important thing. I think it’s a good thing to have elevated ambition. I mean no one wants to be the author of competent poems. You want to write poems or novels or plays that people will remember or deserve to be remembered, even if there aren’t any people left. But mainly just read.
And trust your hunger if what you’re wanting to do for a spell is read catalogues or read murder mysteries or watch television. That means your brain has to rest. Something is being accomplished without your volition or will. And I think that the very best writers honor these moments. It goes along with the “not sitting at the desk religiously even if it’s making you frantic with terror.”
The childish part of the mind that wants to do what it wants to do...you have to go along with it. You have to allow a spirit of play. Otherwise the work will be dead. It doesn’t ever get easy. There’s never been a period in my life when it was easy, except for a few weeks or maybe a day or so here and there. It’s hard, but there’s nothing more absorbing than working on a piece of writing. It’s just the most exciting thing I can think to do. And I wish I could do it every day, all the time.
Howl: What do you do when you get discouraged, when you feel that you can’t write any more?
Glück: Well that happens all the time. I try to recharge myself. I have dinner with friends. I do lowbrow things. I read prose because poetry is going to make me feel suicidal. I don’t mean literally, but it’s pretty despairing. You stay away from the form that’s causing you so much grief. And you just allow time to pass in the hopes that time will change you and change the situation. And in my experience so far, which is very long, that’s happened. But there’s a lot of silent periods for me.
And then I see that the books change so I kind of believe in them. I don’t believe in this sort of industrious quality that some younger poets advocate as though just working hard every day will get you what you need. If you live a long life, you’ll write so much no one will ever want to read your stuff because there will just be too much of it. At the same time, you have to sort of, in the larger sense, edit your output so that it represents the best of what you have. Anyway, some times are very hard and my best advice is to distract yourself because thinking about them is not going to help. But someone else can give you a completely different answer. But that’s my answer. That’s what I do.
POSTSCRIPT: Please tell your students, a postscript in neon letters, that there will always be rejection and slights: They'll need thick skins. Forever. The trick is to remain open to the criticism that will help -- also tell them it is worth it.