Louise Glück honed her poetic voice across a lifetime to speak to us from beyond the grave

When asked what her response was to being awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2020, Louise Glück replied that she was “completely flabbergasted.” Glück, who died on Oct. 13, 2023, at the age of 80, may have been taken aback that she was granted this exalted honor, the first American poet to win since T.S. Eliot in 1948. The Nobel Committee for Literature selected Glück for this literary achievement to honor her “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”