"The First Four Books of Poems" collects the early work that established Louise Gluck as one of America's most original and important poets. Honored with the Pulitzer Prize for "The WildIris," Gluck was celebrated early in her career for her fierce, austerely beautiful voice. In"Firstborn, The House on Marshland Wand, Descending Figure," and "The Triumph of Achilles," which wonthe National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, we see the conscious progression of apoet who speaks with blade-like accuracy and stirring depth.

"Gluck's ... poetry is rock-bottom hard and final yet marked by a sentience next to clairvoyance, and subtle surprise, and strong beauty. In the midst of the usual fumbling well-meant 'delightful' efforts of the poetry of any age, poems like hers must come as a liberating rout of everything would-be, tepid, maundering, arbitrary."(-- Calvin Bedient)

Pulitzer Prize-winner Louise Glück named poet laureate

Louise Glück, former Vermont state poet, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a dozen other poetry awards, will be the next U.S. poet laureate, Librarian of Congress James Billington announced on August 28.

Glück won the Pulitzer Prize for The Wild Iris in 1993. The author of eight books of poetry and one collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry, she has received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, the William Carlos Williams Award, and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. Her most recent book is The Seven Ages.

Glück will assume her duties in the fall, opening the Library's annual literary series on Tuesday, October 21 with a reading of her work. In addition to programming a new reading series, Glück will participate in events in February and in May 2004 at the Library of Congress. She succeeds Billy Collins who served as the Library's Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2001-2003.

Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, congratulates Louise Glück on her appointment and is proud to be the publisher of her extraordinary body of work.

Louise Glück teaches at Williams College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Firstborn — The house on marshland — Descending figure — The triumph of Achilles.