Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary, imperial joy and sorrow of human existence, the dreamed as well as the lived — what could be dearer t… - Louise Glück

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Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,
imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,
the dreamed as well as the lived — what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?

English
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About Louise Glück

Louise Elisabeth Glück (April 22, 1943 – October 13, 2023) was an American poet and essayist. From 2003 to 2004, she was Poet Laureate of the United States. She had won many major literary awards in the United States, including the National Humanities Medal, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize, among others. In 2020, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: Louise Elisabeth Glück
Alternative Names: Louise Gluck
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Additional quotes by Louise Glück

All day I tried to distinguish
need from desire. Now, in the dark,
I feel only bitter sadness for us,
the builders, the planers of wood,
because I have been looking
steadily at these elms
and seen the process that creates
the writhing, stationary tree
is torment, and have understood
it will make no forms but twisted forms.

Come to me said the world. I was standing
in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal — I can finally say
long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty
the healer, the teacher — death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.

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