Gluck's meditations on the myth of Persephone, centered on the lake in Italy that the Romans believed was the entrance to the underworld. The poems function as an extended meditation on death, femininity, and the seduction of annihilation. Her most sustained mythological sequence and arguably her most perfectly sustained collection overall. The Nobel committee cited her work's "unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.