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Learning from Louise Glück: An Interview with Poet Renee Emerson on Teaching the Nobel Laureate's Techniques
by Writing Workshops Staff
3 weeks ago
Louise Glück's work resonates with austere power and emotional precision. The late Nobel laureate, who passed in 2023, left behind a formidable body of work spanning six decades and a legacy of craft wisdom that continues to illuminate the path for emerging poets.
Now, poet and educator Renee Emerson offers writers a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in Glück's techniques through Writing Louise Glück, a 6-Week Online Poetry Class.
Emerson, author of three poetry collections including Keeping Me Still and Church Ladies, brings scholarly insight and practical workshop experience to this deep dive into Glück's oeuvre. Rather than treating Glück's work as untouchable monuments, she shows students how to learn from the master's use of myth, persona, and what Glück called "the unsaid" – that powerful silence between words where meaning crystallizes.
Through the study of Glück's evolution from Firstborn through her later collections, participants will generate eight new poems while learning to incorporate Glück's signature techniques into their own distinct voices.
What makes this workshop particularly compelling is Emerson's understanding that the goal isn't to create Glück imitators, but to help poets discover how her methods can unlock new territories in their own work.
As our interview reveals, Emerson has developed specific prompts drawn from collections like The Wild Iris and Meadowlands that consistently produce breakthrough moments for students. Her line-by-line critique process and publication guidance honor Glück's own rigorous revision practices while acknowledging the practical realities facing contemporary poets.
Our Interview
Writing Workshops: Louise Glück once wrote that "the dream of art is not to assert what is already known but to illuminate what has been hidden." How does your workshop help students uncover their own hidden territories through Glück's techniques, particularly her use of myth and persona?
Renee Emerson: There is a safety in writing from persona and myth–a donning of a "mask," setting aside the individual life circumstance to reach toward a universal experience. Sometimes, particularly when writing trauma, it can be difficult to allow a reader into the emotions of the poem. Myth and Persona provide a framework in which the author can comfortably allow the accessibility that a reader needs to connect.
WW: In your course, you examine Glück's evolution from Firstborn through her later collections. Many writers struggle with the vulnerability that Glück mastered, that spare, almost surgical honesty. How do you guide students toward achieving that kind of emotional precision without falling into sentimentality?
RE: I think the key to avoiding sentimentality is the honesty that Gluck achieved so well. Sentimentality tends to add and inflate what is said, not trusting the reader to engage with the poem unless the emotion is overblown. Gluck rested so well in the ability of sparse, vernacular language to captivate without manipulating. She trusted in the "unsaid" of the poem.
WW: You've structured the course to have students generate eight new poems while studying Glück's work chronologically. Can you share a specific writing prompt inspired by The Wild Iris or Meadowlands that has consistently produced breakthrough moments for your students?
RE: The Wild Iris uses the persona of different garden flowers; a simple, yet affective, prompt that I have used in the past is to have a student choose a flower or plant that is often regarded as a weed or nuisance (the dandelion, for example) and to write a poem in the form of a prayer from this flower to God. With my writing prompts, I like to add some "stretch goals" for each prompt. The stretch goals for this prompt is to incorporate a historical reference, an insect, and the word "cradle."
WW: Glück famously said she writes in "threads" rather than individual poems, creating sequences that speak to each other. How does your workshop approach help poets move beyond writing isolated pieces to developing these deeper conversational threads in their work?
RE: There are a few different ways to do this. Gluck herself would often include poems with the same title, scattered throughout the manuscript ("Matins" and "Vespers" in The Wild Iris, for example), and that is one way a student could find connection between the eight poems created in this class (using the previous prompt, perhaps a series of "prayers" from various garden plants). Another thread could be following a specific myth–Gluck used the myth of Persephone and Demeter–and writing persona poems that include characters from the myth.
WW: Your feedback process includes line-by-line critique and publication suggestions. Given that Glück was known for her rigorous revision process, sometimes taking years to perfect a poem, how do you teach students to balance that perfectionism with the practical need to complete and submit work?
RE: I encourage students to rest in the fact that they have done the best they could with a poem with the abilities they currently have. One hopes, as a writer, that our work continues to improve over the years - a poem that seemed "finished" a few years ago may undergo some significant revision if revisited now - yet that should not stop a writer from sharing their work with the world.
WW: The asynchronous online format allows poets from different time zones to participate. How does this geographic diversity enhance the workshop experience, particularly when studying a poet like Glück whose work deals with such universal themes of loss, desire, and transformation?
RE: That is one of the aspects I love best of teaching an online class! Diversity in the classroom will open our work up to new perspectives, new styles, new voices - a vital step in achieving poems that are emotionally accessible on a universal level.
WW: For poets who might be intimidated by Glück's formidable reputation, the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer, that austere brilliance, how does your workshop make her techniques accessible while still honoring the complexity of her vision? What would you say to someone who loves her work but thinks, "I could never write like that"?
RE: I would hope that you would only, always, write like yourself. But the goal of this class is not to simply turn out imitations – we are going to learn how to incorporate stylistic choices that worked well in Gluck's poems into our own work. Her use of silence - where can we trust the reader to understand without us having to spell it out? Her use of repetition in theme - how can these poems build on each other, to culminate in a larger manuscript? Her use of sparse vernacular - can we eliminate adjectives to trust the bare word to do the emotional work? Studying what makes Louise Gluck's poems come alive for you can help you advance as a writer.
Join the Workshop
If you're ready to deepen your understanding of one of America's most celebrated poets while developing your own voice, Renee Emerson's workshop offers an exceptional opportunity. The course runs for six weeks, allowing you to work at your own pace within weekly deadlines.
Participants will receive personalized feedback on four poems, generate eight new works, and join a diverse community of poets from around the world – all while learning from Glück's masterful techniques.
Whether you're drawn to her mythic transformations, her surgical precision with language, or her ability to make silence speak volumes, this workshop will help you discover how Glück's methods can illuminate your own poetic practice.
Register now to secure your spot in this transformative literary journey.
Instructor Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still, Threshing Floor, and Church Ladies. She is also the author of the chapbook The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants and the middle-grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike. She holds an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where she was also awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.
