Vita Nova

Even though, I'm not american i must say that this the best poetry book i've read in 1999. It's a wonderful book

As a poetry reader who starts his every day by reading poetry,this book was my favorite for the year of 1999.Ms. Gluck should get a Nobel Prize so that other parts of the world can enjoy her masterpiece collections.

Gluck's work should be read fully. She is hard to browse through, not only because she writes her individual collections as novels, but because all eight books continue the story of her life, poems chorusing and coruscating. The surrealist yearnings of Firstborn, the development of wry rhetoric to hide real paing through Triumph of Achilles, the deadly precision of Ararat, all culminated in a ferociously ecstatic (in a biblical sense) book, Wild Iris. Since then, Gluck has been in new territory and taking a lot of flak for it. Vita Nova lacks the iron control usually associated with Gluck. She is trembling in this book, vulnerable. Her cracks beging to show. Indeed the myth is stitched clumsily to the life, because Gluck has had a go at depicting her favorite subject (herself) literally coming apart at the seams. Its a triumphant continuation of her work, and, as always, I am breathless to see what she does next. And next.

What the sea is: that we exist in secret. I wouldn't have imagined so much hope possible until I found these poems.

People who want to know what is going on in poetry these days ought to buy a copy of "Vita Nova" & keep it around the house. People who want to know what has always gone on in the best poetry ought to buy a copy of "Vita Nova" and carry it with them wherever they go.