Synopses & Reviews
Known for sharp imagery, startling metaphors, and deceptively simple diction, Tranströmer's luminous poems offer mysterious glimpses of insight into the deepest facets of humanity. These new translations, in a bilingual edition, are tautly rendered and elegantly cadenced. They are also deeply informed by Crane's personal relationship with the poet and his wife during the years she lived in Sweden.
Swedens Tomas Tranströmer is a poet almost helplessly drawn to those in-between states that form the borderlines between waking and sleeping, the conscious and the unconscious, ecstasy and terror, the public self and the interior self. Often labeled surrealistic, his poems are shorn of surrealisms romantic privileging of randomness. Although his work abounds in visionary moments, he examines them as a scientist would--not rhapsodically, and certainly not as some sort of magus or shaman. His stance is the epitome of grace under pressure.
Earlier (English) versions of Tranströmer now seem a bit shopworn and inadequate—owing to, among other things, outmoded diction, British-isms that can seem jarring to American ears, and a general inability to capture Tranströmers mellifluous but astringent music. Patricia Cranes translations, many of them done in collaboration with Tranströmer and his wife Monica, avoid such pitfalls; they are tautly rendered, imagistically acute, and elegantly cadenced. They offer American readers a Tranströmer befitting our new century.
Review
Reading this poem, a translation from its original Swedish, I was reminded of that childhood wonder and felt again the heft of so many truths waiting to be known.”
Natasha Trethewey, New York Times Magazine
Synopsis
Newly translated bilingual English and Swedish edition of late Nobel Prize winner's unobtrusively unforgettable” poetry.
Synopsis
Tomas Tranströmer (19312015), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is Swedens most acclaimed poet. Known for sharp imagery, startling metaphors and deceptively simple diction, his luminous poems offer mysterious glimpses into the deepest facets of humanity, often through the lens of the natural world. These new translations by Patty Crane, presented side by side with the original Swedish, are tautly rendered and elegantly cadenced. They are also deeply informed by Cranes personal relationship with the poet and his wife during the years she lived in Sweden, where she was afforded greater insight into the nuances of his poetics and the man himself.
About the Author
Tomas Gösta Tranströmer: Tranströmer is a Swedish writer, poet and translator, whose poetry has been translated into over 60 languages. He's acclaimed as one of the most important European writers since World War II and was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. He died March 26, 2015 at the age of 83.
Patty Crane: Patty Cranes translations of Tomas Tranströmers poetry have appeared in American Poetry Review, Blackbird, New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry East, and Smartish Pace. She spent three years living in the Stockholm area of Sweden, where she worked closely with Tranströmer and his wife, Monica.