WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The Nobel Prize in Literature had been awarded to renowned American poet Louise Glück.
Announcing the award Thursday, Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Glück is honored 'for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.'
Glück made her debut in 1968 with Firstborn and was soon acclaimed as one of the most prominent poets in American contemporary literature.
A professor of English at Yale University, New Haven, the New York-native poet lives in Massachusetts.
Glück, 77, has received several prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
Glück has published twelve collections of poetry and some volumes of essays on poetry. All are characterized by a striving for clarity. The themes of childhood and family life, and the close relationship with parents and siblings have remained central in her works.
With collections like The Triumph of Achilles (1985) and Ararat (1990), Glück found a growing audience in the United States and abroad.
In one of her most lauded collections, The Wild Iris (1992), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, she describes the miraculous return of life after winter in the poem 'Snowdrops.'
Averno (2006) is a masterly collection, a visionary interpretation of the myth of Persephone's descent into hell in the captivity of Hades, the god of death.
Another spectacular achievement is her latest collection, Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014), for which Glück received the National Book Award.
'We encounter almost brutally straightforward images of painful family relations (in her poems). It is candid and uncompromising, with no trace of poetic ornament,' the Academy said in a statement.
Bob Dylan was the last American to win the Nobel award in Literature - in 2016.
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