Louise Glück on writer's block

“I think everything good in my own work I owe to endurance.”

Welcome to the latest issue of Subtle Maneuvers. Last week, I spent two mornings writing a lengthy second installment of my #blocktober series, and then yesterday I went to re-read it before scheduling the email and—I just wasn’t feeling it. It all seemed so … effortful. Or like a bunch of answers searching for a question. So I decided to scrap it and, instead, present three paragraphs from the poet Louise Glück, who died last week at age 80, and whose thoughts on writer’s block and the writing life have been bubbling in my head all weekend.

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SILKWORM NOTIONS

Shared on Twitter by the poet Claire Hong

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THE YEARNING AND FAILING PARTS

Shared on Twitter by the writer GennaRose Nethercott

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LIVING IN YOUR INCAPACITY

From a 2014 interview, shared on Twitter by the poet Eugenia Leigh

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Thanks for reading, as always. This silkworm will be back in two weeks, maybe with the issue I already wrote but didn’t send or maybe with a different one. In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on diligence, endurance, yearning, failing, reprimands, your favorite Louise Glück poems (I like “Visitors from Abroad”), and related matters.

Louise Glück circa 1978, via the University of Arizona Poetry Center

In her mid-seventies, via Henri Cole

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RELATED ISSUES

From the archive:

Joanna Hogg’s art of perseverance

Alice Notley on getting things to come easily

Henri Cole on the enemies within