Synopses & Reviews
Averno is a small crater lake in southern Italy, regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld. That place gives its name to Louise Glücks tenth collection: in a landscape turned irretrievably to winter, it is a gate or passageway that invites traffic between worlds while at the same time resisting their reconciliation. Averno is an extended lamentation, its long, restless poems no less spellbinding for being without conventional resoltution or consolation, no less ravishing for being savage, grief-stricken. What Averno provides is not a map to a point of arrival or departure, but a diagram of where we are, the harrowing, enduring present. Averno is a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.
Review
"Averno may be [Gluck's] masterpiece. Certainly it demonstrates that she is writing at the peak of her powers." Nicholas Christopher, the New York Times
Synopsis
Averno is a small crater lake in southern Italy, regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld. That place gives its name to Louise Glücks tenth collection: in a landscape turned irretrievably to winter, it is a gate or passageway that invites traffic between worlds while at the same time resisting their reconciliation. Averno is an extended lamentation, its long, restless poems no less spellbinding for being without conventional resoltution or consolation, no less ravishing for being savage, grief-stricken. What Averno provides is not a map to a point of arrival or departure, but a diagram of where we are, the harrowing, enduring present. Averno is a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.
Synopsis
Averno is a small crater lake in southern , regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld. That place gives its name to Louise Glücks eleventh collection: in a landscape turned irretrievably to winter, it is the only source of heat and light, a gate or passageway that invites traffic between worlds while at the same time opposing their reconciliation. Averno is an extended lamentation, its long, restless poems no less spellbinding for being without plot or hope, no less ravishing for being savage, grief-stricken. What Averno provides is not a map to a point of arrival or departure, but a diagram of where we are, the harrowing, enduring presence.Averno is a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.
About the Author
Louise Glück has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Bollingen Prize, and is the former Poet Laureate of the United States. She teaches at Yale University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.