The First Five Books of Poems

Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2020



In an essay Louise Gluck says that every end of a book is for her a 'conscious diagnostic act, a swearing off', in which she discerns the themes, habits and preoccupations of the previous volume as defining the tasks of the next.

The First Five Books of Poems shows the poet in the conscious evolution she describes, marking time in changes. Readers will hear specifics of sequence: where the ferocious tension of her first book moves towards the finely-spun lyricism of the second. The nouns of that book acquire more intimate weight and become the icons of her third collection, then rise to an archetypal, mythic scale in the fourth. These poems are as various as the force of Gluck's intelligence is constant. The austerely beautiful voice that has become Gluck's' keynote speaks of a life lived in unflinching awareness.

'She is a poet of enormous importance and intelligence,' wrote Bernard O'Donoghue in the Independent; 'we must not miss her.'

The First Five Books of Poems includes Firstborn (1968), The House on Marshland (1975), Descending Figure (1980), The Triumph of Achilles (1985) and Ararat (1990).