SOURCE: Clark, Tom. “Subversive Histories.” American Poetry Review 28, no. 5 (September–October 1999): 7–10.

In the following excerpt, Clark praises Glück's foray into a dreamworld in Vita Nova.

“Life is very weird, no matter how it ends, / very filled with dreams.” Poet Louise Glück's haunting, arresting Vita Nova, a book of trial and tears, heartbreak, resignation and renewal, is also a book of dreaming.

Glück's poetic sequence begins and ends in parallel framing dreams, and in between follows a drifting narrative course out of which instructive dreams appear like floating islands in soundless fog. With unmisgiving trust this poet finds both faith and value in a kind of wakeful second-seeing that re-interprets ancient mythic fables with the same analytic intensity it applies to personal dream symbolism, insistently relating the lessons of both sorts of dreams to life in the “real” world.

“I dreamed this: / can waking take back...