Ararat : Poems

A new edition of the Nobel laureate’s searing sixth collection of poetry, about “the myth of a happy family” (The New York Review of Books).

Louise Glück, the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, was an era-defining poet, one who was innovative, brave, and wholly individual. Her work has left an indelible mark on the literature of our nation and of the world. As Dan Chiasson wrote in The New Yorker, “This voice is not going to go away.”

Ararat, the great poet’s sixth collection of poetry, was originally published in 1992. Now, in this new edition, the impact of the work is felt anew. Glück created a ruthlessly probing family portrait, and these poems confront, with devastating irony, the difficulties and intricacies of a daughter’s relationship to her father and mother. The result is a “blinding and subtle” collection in which “the wonder comes silently, quick as an electric shock from a broken cord; we hardly know what''s hit us.”