Proofs and Theories » (Reissue)

Louise Glück won the Pulitzer Prize for The Wild Iris in 1993. The author of eight books of poetry and one collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry, she has received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, the William Carlos Williams Award, and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. She was named the next U.S. poet laureate in August 2003. Her most recent book is The Seven Ages. Louise Glück teaches at Williams College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Winner of the 1993 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Non-Fiction, Proofs and Theories is an illuminating collection of essays by Louise Glück, whose most recent book of poems, The Wild Iris, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Glück brings to her prose the same precision of language, the same incisiveness and insight that distinguish her poetry. The force of her thought is evident everywhere in these essays, from her explorations of other poets' work to her skeptical contemplation of current literary critical notions such as "sincerety" and "courage." Here also are Glück's revealing reflections on her own education and life as a poet, and a tribute to her teacher and mentor, Stanley Kunitz. Proofs and Theories is the testament of a major poet.

Publishers Weekly

Although Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gluck ( The Wild Iris ) maintains that she is ``uneasy with commentary,'' her collection of 16 essays, all previously published in literary journals, is often profound. The subjects of her writing include poets Stanley Kunitz, Hugh Seidman, T. S. Eliot; the future (considered in a 1993 Williams College graduation address); education; and the nature of courage. Yet the real lure of her commentary is sensibility, even more than subject. As with her poetry, Gluck's prose is fine and pared but visionary; her intelligence is precise and earnest. She uses mind as a moral power, whether addressing experience or literature. For instance, in ``Disinterestedness,'' Gluck writes in support of an ideal of reading with nearly bias-free receptivity that literary theorists may scoff, but is liberating and persuasive as she explains it. Here and elsewhere, Gluck's brevity, clarity and resolute independence are impressive. (Aug.)