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The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer
by Tomas Transtromer
Book Reviewed by:A cherished and invaluable collection of the finest of Tranströmer's poems, carefully chosen and translated.
The contemporary Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer is a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (2011) and has a prestigious worldwide reputation. In this 2001 collection, Robert Bly, a longtime friend and confidant of Tranströmer's, as well as one of his first translators, has carefully chosen and translated the finest of Tranströmer's poems to create this cherished and invaluable collection.
When Tranströmer won the Nobel Prize in October 2011, he had been writing and publishing for over half a century. His work has displayed a remarkable consistency throughout the past sixty years, not because he has failed to evolve but because the poems that he wrote as a young man in the 1950s and 60s reveal a maturity and self-confidence that have only increased with time. Tranströmer's early work doesn't read like a trial run for later greatness or an attempt to find a distinctive voice; the grace, the self-effacing humor, and the attentiveness to the world around him are already formed and ripe for refinement...continued
Full Review
(789 words)
(Reviewed by Marnie Colton).
Tomas Tranströmer was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1931, and spent his career as a psychologist. The author of a dozen books of poetry, Tranströmer is the most renowned Scandinavian poet since World War II. His poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages. In 2011, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality." He has received numerous other honors, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, Germany's Petrach Prize, the Bellman Prize, the Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize, the August Prize, and a Special Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry. For ...
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