She was in a long relationship with poet Jack Gilbert,[2] and later married writer, political activist, and philosophy professor John Brentlinger. The couple divorced in 1990. She was then in a relationship with an unnamed married man [3] for an unspecified time.
"Linda Gregg brings us back to poetry. . . . She is original and mysterious, one of the best poets in America", says Gerald Stern.[7]
Much of Linda Gregg's poetry is inspired by her extensive travels.[8] Her work has received enormous critical praise for its soaring lyrical depictions of grief and loss, and the strange strengths and beauty she mines from them. Joseph Brodsky once stated that "[t]he blinding intensity of Ms. Gregg's lines stains the reader's psyche the way lightning or heartbreak do."[9]
The poet Czesław Miłosz said, "I consider Linda Gregg to be one of the best American poets, and I value the neatness of design in her poems, as well as the energy of each line."[9]W. S. Merwin confessed:
"I have loved Linda Gregg's poems since I first read them. They are original in the way that really matters: they speak clearly of their source. They are inseparable from the surprising, unrolling, eventful, pure current of their language, and they convey at once the pain of individual loss, a steady and utterly personal radiance."[10]
^ ab"Linda Gregg". Announcement, New York State Writers Institute, State University of New York (2002). Archived from the original on 2007-06-07. Retrieved 2007-06-20.