WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
A luminous collection of essays from Louise Glück, winner of the Nobel
Prize in Literature and one of our most original and influential poets
Five decades after her debut poetry collection, Firstborn, Louise
Glück is a towering figure in American letters. Written with the same
probing, analytic control that has long distinguished her poetry,
American Originality is Glück's second book of essays--her first,
Proofs and Theories, won the 1993 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First
Nonfiction. Glück's moving and disabusing lyricism is on full display in
this decisive new collection.
From its opening pages, American Originality forces readers to
consider contemporary poetry and its demigods in radical, unconsoling,
and ultimately very productive ways. Determined to wrest ample, often
contradictory meaning from our current literary discourse, Glück
comprehends and destabilizes notions of "narcissism" and "genius" that
are unique to the American literary climate. This includes erudite
analyses of the poets who have interested her throughout her own career,
such as Rilke, Pinsky, Chiasson, and Dobyns, and introductions to the
first books of poets like Dana Levin, Peter Streckfus, Spencer Reece,
and Richard Siken. Forceful, revealing, challenging, and instructive,
American Originality is a seminal critical achievement.
