Averno

A widely revered collection from the Nobel prize-winning poet, publishing in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time

This startlingly original reworking of the Persephone myth takes us to the icy shores of , the crater lake regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld. Here, the consolations of rebirth and renewal are eclipsed by the immediacy of loss - by a mother's possessive grief, an abducted girl's equivocal memories, a farmer's lament for a lost harvest. This chorus offers neither comfort nor solace but deepened understanding, its sorrow textured by the poet's luminous wit. Together, the poems of swell to a staggeringly powerful lamentation, through which the reader glimpses the ecstasy of the inevitable, only to find it resisted by the insistent, impersonal presence of the Earth.

Format: Paperback
Page Count: 96 Pages
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Published: Nov 2021
ISBN: 9780241526002