Joanne Feit Diehl, ed., On Louise Glück: Change What You See (Ann Arbor: Uni-
versity of Michigan Press, 2005).
Essential collection featuring essays by leading critics, poets, and scholars. The
volume also includes Diehl’s interview with the poet.
Elizabeth Dodd, “Louise Glück: The Ardent Understatement of Post Confes-
sional Classicism,” in her The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet: H .D ., Louise
Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Glück (Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1992), pp. 149–197.
Situating Glück’s position within women’s and contemporary poetry, examines
the poet’s reliance on silence and omission, which allows her to use the mythic
and archetypal without losing personal voice.
Tony Hoagland, “Three Tenors: Glück, Hass, Pinsky, and the Development of
Talent,” American Poetry Review, 32 ( July–August 2003): 37–42.
An excellent and concise overview of Glück’s work from Firstborn through
Meadowlands, provided by the last third of the essay.
Lynn Keller, “‘Free / of Blossom and Subterfuge’: Louise Glück and the Language
of Renunciation,” in Word, Self, Poem: Essays on Contemporary Poetry from the
“Jubilation of Poets,” edited by Leonard M. Trawick (Kent, Ohio: Kent State
University Press, 1990), pp. 120–129.
Uses examples from Glück’s first four volumes of poetry to examine themes
conveyed by her negative images of womanhood—as both biologically and
socially determined experience.
Daniel Morris, The Poetry of Louise Glück: A Thematic Introduction (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 2006).
Essential book-length study of Glück’s poetry examines her use of “masks,”
or personae, drawn from the Bible, fairy tales, and history. Each chapter
focuses on an overall thematic issue and how it is treated in Glück’s individual
collections.
Lisa Sewell, “‘In the End, The One Who Has Nothing Wins’: Louise Glück and
the Poetics of Anorexia,” Literature Interpretation Theory, 17 (2006): 49–76.
Draws from psychoanalytic and literary theory to interpret images of anorexia
in the poet’s work within the context of poststructuralist accounts of subjectivity.
Glück’s work shows how “it is not gender per se that makes women vulnerable to
eating disorders, but the way social norms and expectations construct femininity.”
Helen Vendler, “Louise Glück, Stephen Dunn, Brad Leithauser, Rita Dove,” in
The Music of What Happens: Poems, Poets, Critics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1988), pp. 437–454.
Essay that places Glück in the context of her contemporaries and treats her
unique contributions to poetic form and technique.
—D. Gilson and Linda Trinh Moser