Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

In Vita Nova, Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Louise Glück manages the apparently impossible: a terrifying act of perspective that brings into resolution the smallest human hope and the vast forces that shape and thwart it

Since Ararat in 1990, Louise Glück has been exploring a form that is, according to the poet, Robert Hass, her invention. Vita Nova--like its immediate predecessors, a booklength sequence--combines the ecstatic utterance of The Wild Iris with the worldly dramas elaborated in Meadowlands. Vita Nova is a book that exists in the long moment of spring: a book of deaths and beginnings, resignation and hope; brutal, luminous, and far-seeing.

Like late Yeats, Vita Nova dares large statement. By turns stern interlocutor and ardent novitiate, Glück compasses the essential human paradox. In Vita Nova, Louise Glück manages the apparently impossible: a terrifying act of perspective that brings into resolution the smallest human hope and the vast forces that thwart and shape it.

This landmark collection of contemporary American poetry explores the essential human paradox through:

Lyrical Poetry: Experience the ecstatic utterance and stern, far-seeing voice that defined a Nobel laureate, where every line is crafted with brutal and luminous precision.
Mythological Themes: Journey with figures like Orpheus, Eurydice, and Dido as their ancient stories are recast into modern dramas of the heart and its desires.
A Booklength Sequence: Discover the unique, inventive form where individual poems build into a singular, powerful narrative arc of death, beginning, resignation, and hope.
Contemplations on Love and Loss: A terrifyingly honest perspective on the smallest human hopes and the vast forces that thwart them, set in the long, transformative moment of spring.