Claire Luchette, Poetry: You weren’t completely sure you wanted to do this interview. At this stage in your career, do you still feel a sense of vulnerability when you publish a new book?

Louise Glück: Lord, of course. Vulnerability, and horror, and a kind of grief at the book’s being kidnapped by the world. I have been very happy, very serene, for nearly a year in the knowledge that I had this new work only a few people had seen. I could enjoy by myself its existence, and the pleasure of not having to write for a while, and the sense of having achieved something.

A better word than vulnerability, though, would be dread. I feel dread and sorrow at the end of a period of private and, this time, prolonged euphoria.