UIUC Poetry Spotlight: Isaac Willis

For today’s celebration of National Poetry Month, Isaac Willis, a student in UIUC’s Creative Writing MFA program, reads Jericho Brown’s “Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry.”

Watch Willis’ reading on our Instagram and read his reflections below:

To me, this is a perfect poem. Maybe that’s because I may or may not have taken a field trip to a slaughterhouse. (My alma mater, Monmouth College, nearly touched one of the largest slaughterhouses in the Midwest.) Maybe that’s because I want another gimlet, another good book. It’s also the perfect poem for America right now. Written during a time of racial reckoning, of an international pandemic, of quarantine, the poem subtly navigates the politics of place and being in it. “I have PTSD / About the Lord,” says Brown’s speaker. But then, “God save the people who work / In grocery stores.” Audre Lorde famously said, “Poetry is not a luxury.” She also said, in the same essay, “it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.”

I can’t help but feel, when I read this Jericho Brown poem, that something new and necessary is being architected. I naively thought, a year ago, when the University and the world were effectively locked down, that staying shut up inside would make me a better person. If anything, it has exacerbated my fears and anxieties and biases even more. I texted something along those lines to a friend awhile back, and he responded, “Or you are a better person, and you don’t like what the new light has shown you.” Maybe so. Maybe grief, when it’s so thick you can touch it, is a balm. Maybe I’d rather be able to sit and talk with my friend, while we sip lavender gin. Maybe it’s a privilege to say so. Thank you. I’m sorry.

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Congratulations to Nobel Prize Recipient Louise Glück!

On October 8th, American poet Louise Glück was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Congratulations!

portrait of poet louise glück

Louise Glück, recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature

Glück was awarded the prize “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” In addition to the Nobel, she has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and was the 2003-2004 poet laureate of the United States.

The Nobel Prize in Literature was first awarded in 1901 and is given out annually. The Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes created by Alfred Nobel; recipients are selected by the Swedish Academy based upon their body of work.

Interested in reading Louise Glück’s poetry? Many of her titles are available to check out at the library:

cover featuring plant life next to book title, the wild iris

The Wild Iris, by Louise Glück. Click for catalog link.

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Faithful and Virtuous Night, by Louise Glück. Click for catalog link.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cover art of flowers and plants on a salmon background

The House on Marshland, by Louise Glück. Click for catalog link.

If you’d like to read other works by Louise Glück, you can find them here.

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