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The Yale Review | Meghan O'Rourke Remembers Louise Glück

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Louise Glück once said that she couldn't write poems; she wrote books. A selection of her books on the author's desk. Courtesy the author THE FIRST BOOK of poetry I ever read was Ararat (1990), by Louise Glück. I had read many poems in classes, from anthologies, but had never actually read a collection of poems front to back, or even thought about a collection as a meaningful record of a poet’s creative output at a given time. At the time—this was 1994—I was an eighteen-year-old sophomore at Yale, enrolled in my first poetry workshop. Our professor, the poet Wayne Koestenbaum, had given us the task of reading a book of contemporary poetry and writing a brief report. On a dull spring day, I sat on the floor at the Yale Co-op leafing through books, until I found Ararat, and opened it randomly to the poem “Celestial Music”: I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god, she thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth,

The Yale Review | Meghan O'Rourke Remembers Louise Glück Tribute Louise Glück The poet who taught me to write books Meghan O’Rourke Louise Glück once said that she couldn't write poems; she wrote books. A selection of her books on the author's desk. Courtesy the author The first book of poetry I ever read was Ararat (1990), by Louise Glück. I had read many poems in classes, from anthologies, but had never actually read a collection of poems front to back, or even thought about a collection as a meaningful record of a poet’s creative output at a given time. At the time—this was 1994—I was

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