The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems
Tomas Transtromer
(Author)
Robin Fulton
(Translator)
Description
In day's first hours consciousness can grasp the worldas the hand grips a sun-warmed stone.
Translated into fifty languages, the poetry of Tomas Transtromer has had a profound influence around the world, an influence that has steadily grown and has now attained a prominence comparable to that of Pablo Neruda's during his lifetime. But if Neruda is blazing fire, Transtromer is expanding ice. The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems gathers all the poems Tomas Transtromer has published, from his distinctive first collection in 1954, 17 Poems, through his epic poem Baltics ("my most consistent attempt to write music"), and The Sad Gondola, published six years after he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1990 ("I am carried in my shadow / like a violin / in its black case."), to his most recent slim book, The Great Enigma, published in Sweden in 2004. Also included is his prose-memoir Memories Look at Me, containing keys into his intensely spiritual, metaphysical poetry (like the brief passage of insect collecting on Runmaro Island when he was a teenager). Firmly rooted in the natural world, his work falls between dream and dream; it probes "the great unsolved love" with the opening up, through subtle modulations, of "concrete words."
Product Details
Price
$18.95
$17.62
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
October 17, 2006
Pages
262
Dimensions
6.0 X 0.8 X 9.1 inches | 0.95 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780811216722
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Tomas Tranströmer (1933-2015) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011. His books of poetry, which have been translated into sixty languages, include The Deleted World and The Half-Finished Heaven, and he received numerous international honors during his lifetime. Tranströmer, a trained Swedish psychologist, worked for years in state institutions with juveniles and the disabled, and his work was often praised for the inventive ways in which it examined the mind. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy stated that "through his condensed, translucent images, he gave us fresh access to reality."
Robin Fulton, a Scottish poet and longtime resident of Norway, has been translating Tranströmer for over thirty-five years.
Reviews
The books of his poetry on my shelves never remain unopened for long. I turn to him when I wish to come as close as possible to what cannot be said.--Teju Cole
Tomas Tranströmer's poetry permits us to be happily certain of our own uncertainties... Like the animals in Rilke's first sonnet to Orpheus, they are alive to the god's music.--Seamus Heaney
Tomas Tranströmer's poetry permits us to be happily certain of our own uncertainties... Like the animals in Rilke's first sonnet to Orpheus, they are alive to the god's music.--Seamus Heaney