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Proofs and Theories
Louise Glück
10% off
Categories: 20th Century, American, Women
Imprint: Lives and Letters
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Imprint: Lives and Letters
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (128 pages)
(Pub. Feb 1999)
9781857543902
£12.95 £11.65
- Description
- Author
- Awards
- Reviews
Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2020
Louise Gluck's award-winning collection of essays is the work of a major poet and a distinguished teacher. She writes of her upbringing, her human and literary antecedents, and she dwells with a scrupulous eye on details of lives and poems, until she comes to understand them.
The act of integrity involved in the essays is part and parcel of this poet's unsparing candour. Her criticism takes risks and can be fierce passionate, merciless to its subjects, even (or especially) when the subject is herself. The consolations that such essays offer are those of clarity. She attends to T.S. Eliot, George 0ppen, Sylvia Plath, Robinson Jeffers, Wallace Stevens, John Berryman and others, appraising what is risked in the work of each writer, and what we risk and gain in reading them.
Awards won by Louise Glück
Winner, 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature
Short-listed, 2014 Forward Prize for Best Collection (Faithful and Virtuous Night)
Short-listed, 2014 T. S. Eliot Prize (Faithful and Virtuous Night)
Winner, 1993 Pulitzer Prize (The Wild Iris)
Praise for Louise Glück
'Glück has a keen sense of how humans look for beauty in what they missed or lost, the beauty there is in that and of course also the sadness: 'how ignorant we all are most of the time, / seeing things / only from one vantage, like a sniper.'
Kristian Vistrup Madsen, The White Review
'This wry, read-in-a-sitting delight channels the myriad possibilities of fiction with a huge sense of fun.'
Justine Jordan, The Guardian Fiction Books of the Year 2022
'Marigold and Rose can be devoured in a single sitting, and that's probably the best way to enter its tonal world, which is strangely hypnotic, in part because the mood never swings to violent intensity, and in part because of the orderly rhythms of Glück's prose... like her poetry, it gains its force from acute observation'
Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
'Glück, in shrinking the world to the size of a pair of blankets inside cribs, manages to gently pack her narrative with feeling... This is a delicate, minor-key book. It addresses, in larval and thus primal form, many of the concerns of Glück's poetry.'
Dwight Garner, The New York Times
'In lesser hands Marigold and Rose could feel mawkish. But Glück, at 79, hasnât won most of the major literary prizes out there to mess this up. It's an affecting, alluring book. As soon as I'd finished I read it again.'
Susie Mesure, The Spectator
'Glück's challenge, which she elegantly achieves, is to channel her late wisdom into the simple yet surprising language and perspective of children... the themes of sisterhood, family, proximity, and the acquisition of language have long been Glück's hallmarks; here, she has transformed those themes with a shapeshifter's aplomb. Marigold and Rose could be read at bedtime between parents and children -or by anyone needing a masterclass in brief, compact storytelling with resonances for the very wise and the very innocent.'
Oluwaseun Olayiwola, The Telegraph
'Scraps of family intimacy float in, Gluck's touch sometimes so light it comes to us as a murmur in the ear...a brave book'
Dilys Wood, Artemis Poetry
'Glück's prose is simultaneously condensed, so that any one sentence takes time to properly unfold in the mind, and closely interwoven, so that highlighting a single sentence feels like doing violence to the intricate arguments her sentences form together... American Originality is a provocation and delight for anyone who takes writing seriously... It is an essential work by an essential artist.'
Heather Cass White, Times Literary Supplement
'Glück's talent is for saying the thing that might not feel true until it is put into words, as though we were on the therapist's couch. But she doesn't counsel or patronize - she's right on the couch next to the reader, hearing the lesson... Louise Glück has written some of the most incantatory, sorrowful, wrenching lyrics in American poetry. Her work is not for readers who want to be coddled, but for those who can apprehend that psychological dissonance, difficult as it may be to endure, is evidence of life.'
Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Times Literary Supplement
'Glück's poems in this collection are quietly compelling as they suggest stories of sorrow and loss which are fundamental to our shared human existence.'
Kathleen Bell, The High Window
'Glück's skill is Orpheus-like: to travel to hellish depths and find a way back again. As we journey through such dark territories, we are grateful for her insight.'
Tanvi Roberts, Irish Times
Glucks first collection since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020. Memories, absent voices and clocks speak of the passage of time, and of the loss and decay left in time's wake. Yet there is also acceptance, coping and - as the 'collective' of the title suggests - an invitation to those readers 'who will know what I mean'.
Maria Crawford, Financial Times Best Poetry Books of 2021
'Silence has been prominent in Glück's work for decades... The book is full of echoes of her earlier work, its winds (the breath of the void) and silence'
Elisa Gabbert, New York Times
'A slim volume of just 15 pieces, but like all the Nobel laureate's work, it punches above its apparent weight. Glück has always been a fastidiously exact truth-teller; her lucid poems pretend to a plainness that's really the simplicity of something more fully worked out than the rest of us can manage. It is a hallmark of late, great writing, as is the courage to go into the dark... We're back in the stylised, half-dreamed Glück landscapes that are rural equivalents of an Edward Hopper painting, and back with her astonishing poetry'
Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
'These essays constitute long-form extensions of Gluck's own poetic concerns... people familiar with Glück's poetry will recognise this hallmark astringency and its attendant whiplash wit'
Dzifa Benson, The Poetry Review
'Gluck's essays are delicate, tactful, self-aware and wry; her sense of humour is so understated that you might miss it if you think of her solely as a poet of tenacity and autumnal smokiness... Reading American Originality alongside her first essay collection, Proofs and Theories (1994), a portrait emerges of a wilful, embattled child who earned her stern serenity not only through loss but also through that miraculous state of grace that poetry can provide'
Ange Mlinko, Literary Review
'In this collection of sharply focussed and insightful essays one unifying theme emerges. Despite all the fads and fashions, the dead ends and new waves of poetry one thing survives, and that as she so vividly reminds us, is poetry'
Roger Bloor, The Alchemy Spoon
'Her writing's emotional and rhetorical intensity are beyond dispute. Not once in six books has she wavered from a formal seriousness, an unhurried sense of control and a starkness of expression that, like a scalpel, slices the mist dwelling between hope and pain.'
Washington Post 'Gluck stands at the centre of time and speaks, not with raw emotion or linguistic abandon, but with the ageless urgency of questions about the soul.'
Partisan Review 'Characteristically sure-footed, Glück speaks to our time in a voice that is onstage, but heard from the wings.'
Publishers Weekly
Kristian Vistrup Madsen, The White Review
'This wry, read-in-a-sitting delight channels the myriad possibilities of fiction with a huge sense of fun.'
Justine Jordan, The Guardian Fiction Books of the Year 2022
'Marigold and Rose can be devoured in a single sitting, and that's probably the best way to enter its tonal world, which is strangely hypnotic, in part because the mood never swings to violent intensity, and in part because of the orderly rhythms of Glück's prose... like her poetry, it gains its force from acute observation'
Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
'Glück, in shrinking the world to the size of a pair of blankets inside cribs, manages to gently pack her narrative with feeling... This is a delicate, minor-key book. It addresses, in larval and thus primal form, many of the concerns of Glück's poetry.'
Dwight Garner, The New York Times
'In lesser hands Marigold and Rose could feel mawkish. But Glück, at 79, hasnât won most of the major literary prizes out there to mess this up. It's an affecting, alluring book. As soon as I'd finished I read it again.'
Susie Mesure, The Spectator
'Glück's challenge, which she elegantly achieves, is to channel her late wisdom into the simple yet surprising language and perspective of children... the themes of sisterhood, family, proximity, and the acquisition of language have long been Glück's hallmarks; here, she has transformed those themes with a shapeshifter's aplomb. Marigold and Rose could be read at bedtime between parents and children -or by anyone needing a masterclass in brief, compact storytelling with resonances for the very wise and the very innocent.'
Oluwaseun Olayiwola, The Telegraph
'Scraps of family intimacy float in, Gluck's touch sometimes so light it comes to us as a murmur in the ear...a brave book'
Dilys Wood, Artemis Poetry
'Glück's prose is simultaneously condensed, so that any one sentence takes time to properly unfold in the mind, and closely interwoven, so that highlighting a single sentence feels like doing violence to the intricate arguments her sentences form together... American Originality is a provocation and delight for anyone who takes writing seriously... It is an essential work by an essential artist.'
Heather Cass White, Times Literary Supplement
'Glück's talent is for saying the thing that might not feel true until it is put into words, as though we were on the therapist's couch. But she doesn't counsel or patronize - she's right on the couch next to the reader, hearing the lesson... Louise Glück has written some of the most incantatory, sorrowful, wrenching lyrics in American poetry. Her work is not for readers who want to be coddled, but for those who can apprehend that psychological dissonance, difficult as it may be to endure, is evidence of life.'
Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Times Literary Supplement
'Glück's poems in this collection are quietly compelling as they suggest stories of sorrow and loss which are fundamental to our shared human existence.'
Kathleen Bell, The High Window
'Glück's skill is Orpheus-like: to travel to hellish depths and find a way back again. As we journey through such dark territories, we are grateful for her insight.'
Tanvi Roberts, Irish Times
Glucks first collection since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020. Memories, absent voices and clocks speak of the passage of time, and of the loss and decay left in time's wake. Yet there is also acceptance, coping and - as the 'collective' of the title suggests - an invitation to those readers 'who will know what I mean'.
Maria Crawford, Financial Times Best Poetry Books of 2021
'Silence has been prominent in Glück's work for decades... The book is full of echoes of her earlier work, its winds (the breath of the void) and silence'
Elisa Gabbert, New York Times
'A slim volume of just 15 pieces, but like all the Nobel laureate's work, it punches above its apparent weight. Glück has always been a fastidiously exact truth-teller; her lucid poems pretend to a plainness that's really the simplicity of something more fully worked out than the rest of us can manage. It is a hallmark of late, great writing, as is the courage to go into the dark... We're back in the stylised, half-dreamed Glück landscapes that are rural equivalents of an Edward Hopper painting, and back with her astonishing poetry'
Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
'These essays constitute long-form extensions of Gluck's own poetic concerns... people familiar with Glück's poetry will recognise this hallmark astringency and its attendant whiplash wit'
Dzifa Benson, The Poetry Review
'Gluck's essays are delicate, tactful, self-aware and wry; her sense of humour is so understated that you might miss it if you think of her solely as a poet of tenacity and autumnal smokiness... Reading American Originality alongside her first essay collection, Proofs and Theories (1994), a portrait emerges of a wilful, embattled child who earned her stern serenity not only through loss but also through that miraculous state of grace that poetry can provide'
Ange Mlinko, Literary Review
'In this collection of sharply focussed and insightful essays one unifying theme emerges. Despite all the fads and fashions, the dead ends and new waves of poetry one thing survives, and that as she so vividly reminds us, is poetry'
Roger Bloor, The Alchemy Spoon
'Her writing's emotional and rhetorical intensity are beyond dispute. Not once in six books has she wavered from a formal seriousness, an unhurried sense of control and a starkness of expression that, like a scalpel, slices the mist dwelling between hope and pain.'
Washington Post 'Gluck stands at the centre of time and speaks, not with raw emotion or linguistic abandon, but with the ageless urgency of questions about the soul.'
Partisan Review 'Characteristically sure-footed, Glück speaks to our time in a voice that is onstage, but heard from the wings.'
Publishers Weekly
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