The Gods of Winter is Dana Gioia’s critically-acclaimed second volume of poetry. It is one of the few American volumes ever chosen as the main selection of England’s Poetry Book Society.

Praise for The Gods of Winter:

“In his best poems, Gioia rises to the occasion of all great poetry: to immortalize our experience by submitting it to the tests of tradition and inspiration. Anyone who really wants to know the answer to the question, ‘Can poetry matter?’ will find that The Gods of Winter is full of answers.”

—Thomas D’Evelyn, The Christian Science Monitor

“‘Prayer,’ ‘All Souls’,’ ‘Counting the Children,’ ‘The Gods of Winter,’ ‘Planting a Sequoia,’ and ‘Equations of the Light,’ strike me as being among the best that American poets have written in recent years.”

—Christopher Clausen, The Sewanee Review

“The Gods of Winter is an important book, if only because it exemplifies Gioia’s courageously aesthetic approach to poetry—to its language and rhythms. Fortunately for those of us who agree with him, it is also a good book. His poems are limpid, mellifluous, quotable, and likely to be loved.”

—Anne Stevenson, Poetry Wales

“This still-young poet has left us, in two exquisitely wrought books of poetry, with enough evidence to assure that he will continue to produce lyrics of the quantity and quality of such poets as A.E. Housman, J. V. Cunningham, Philip Larkin, and Donald Justice. . . In either case he has already established himself as a poet with a permanent place in the canon of American poetry.”

—Robert McPhillips, Verse