Washington, Oct 31: Critics praise Louise Gluck for wringing powerful emotions from simple language, and for poetry that resonates equally with experts and common readers who recognize her evocations of grief and loss, and of falling in and out of love. But despite the accessibility of her work, America's new poet laureate is an intensely private person.
Gluck (pronounced "Glick") has made it clear to the Library of Congress, which appointed her and pays her privately endowed $35,000 stipend, that she won't be following in the footsteps of predecessors, who transformed the position into a kind of traveling salesman to promote the art.

The man she succeeded, Billy Collins, went on cross-country tours, got behind a programme pushing schools to choose a poem a day for pupils to read and has even recorded poetry selections for a Delta Airlines in-flight audio channel. Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove and Robert Haas all took part in high-profile initiatives to promote poetry appreciation.
But many of her fellow poets say that role would never suit Gluck, and she should follow her own course.

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"The poet laureate is very free to lead a poetry circus or stick to one's own knitting," said Collins. Said Pinsky, a close friend: "It's not a public relations job. It's not any kind of a job. It's an honor." The Library encourages laureates to craft the position in their own way, but limits its official duties. Gluck is scheduled to give her inaugural lecture at the Library on Tuesday, and has events planned in February and May 2004. Jill Brett, the Library's director of communications, said Gluck has expressed an interest in programmes to encourage young poets, though she had no specifics. "Obviously, the idea of the poet laureateship is to have a wide variety of poetic styles represented and personal styles that go with those styles," Brett said. "She is a poet of unusual qualities and certainly is of a very high caliber. We're very delighted to have her."

Gluck declined to sit for an interview, and during a brief telephone conversation, said she preferred not to act as an intermediary for readers' experience with her work. "I have no concern with widening audience," said Gluck, who prefers her audience "small, intense, passionate." Gluck was born on Long Island. Her father was the son of Hungarian immigrants who also wanted to be a writer. But he lacked the all-consuming passion that "makes it possible to endure every form of failure" and went into business, Gluck said in a 1989 lecture, "The Education of a Poet," which was published in her 1994 book, Proofs and Theories.
Gluck looked to her mother for approval but rarely found it, she wrote, and in her teens became severely anorexic, forcing her to drop out of school and undergo seven years of psychoanalysis. She worried the therapy would quelch her writing, but instead "it taught me to think," she wrote.

Bureau Report