Louise Glück (Doctor of Letters)

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Louise Glück received an honorary degree from Dartmouth in a virtual ceremony held in May.

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Black and white portrait of Louise Glück
Louise Glück (Photo by Katherine Wolkoff)
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LOUISE GLÜCK, as an award-winning poet and essayist, your words on the page, in an unmistakable voice, guide us on an exploration of our world and ourselves while bringing stark, yet startling clarity to the complexities of our human existence.

Drawn to the writings of Blake and the Bard from the moment you learned to read, you responded to the rhythm and rhyme and, most importantly, to the voices crying out to you. With an innate love of language, you aspired to become a writer, penning your first poem at the age of 13.

Influenced by psychoanalysis and by the mentorship of writers Léonie Adams and Stanley Kunitz in the mid-1960s, you began to find your voice and fulfill your promise as a poet.

Honoring the intimacy that makes the reader-writer relationship so sacred, you meticulously crafted poems about life and death, love and loss – suffused with nature and often with ancient myth – that have helped us find strength in our struggles and solace in our daily routines.

With an extraordinary 14 collections published to date, there are no greater honors for a poet to receive than those that have been bestowed on you. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, The Wild Iris to the Bollingen Prize-winning Vita Nova, your exceptional body of work earned you the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature and added the name Glück to the pantheon of poets whose work will not only endure, but be celebrated and revered for generations to come.

For your outstanding literary achievements as one of the most preeminent poets of our time and for the intensity of your devotion, both to your students and your craft, Dartmouth is proud to award you the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.

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