The Sorrow Gondola
The Sorrow Gondola was the great Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer's first collection of poems after his stroke in 1990. Translated by Michael McGriff, Tranströmer's great work is available in its first single-volume English edition.\ Tomas Tranströmer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2011.
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One of Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer's greatest poetic achievements, published here in a single volume.Publishers WeeklyThere is no explicit mention in these pages of the devastating recent stroke that severely impaired the ability of Transtrmer, one of Sweden's most distinguished poets, to speak, read and write. Nevertheless, this slender volume, published in Sweden in 1996 and the first new collection to appear there since Transtrmer's illness, centers unmistakably on the controlled anguish that the 66-year-old poet's physical conditionand encroaching mortalityimposes. "I am carried in my shadow/ like a violin/ in its black case," he writes in "April and Silence": "The only thing I want to say/ glitters out of reach/ like the silver/ in a pawnbroker's." What saves the collection from morbidness is the formal beauty and remorselessly compressed clarity of the writing. Indeed, the almost telegraphic brevity of the poems is the volume's only concession to Transtrmer's handicap. With the exception of the four-page title poem, a meditation on Wagner's final months, most of the pieces are only a few stanzas long, yet they retain all the force of the poet's earlier work. Fulton's translations, while able, are marred by occasional inaccuracies. Alternate versions of some of the poems can be seen in Ecco Press's 1995 Transtrmer collection, For the Living and the Dead. (Sept.)
April and Silence5National Insecurity7A Page from the Night-Book9The Sorrow Gondola11Landscape with Suns19November in the Former DDR21From July 199025The Cuckoo27Three Stanzas29Like being a Child31Two Cities33The Light Streams in35Night Journey37Hail39From the Island, 186045Silence47Midwinter49A Sketch from 184451
\ Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly\ There is no explicit mention in these pages of the devastating recent stroke that severely impaired the ability of Transtrmer, one of Sweden's most distinguished poets, to speak, read and write. Nevertheless, this slender volume, published in Sweden in 1996 and the first new collection to appear there since Transtrmer's illness, centers unmistakably on the controlled anguish that the 66-year-old poet's physical conditionand encroaching mortalityimposes. "I am carried in my shadow/ like a violin/ in its black case," he writes in "April and Silence": "The only thing I want to say/ glitters out of reach/ like the silver/ in a pawnbroker's." What saves the collection from morbidness is the formal beauty and remorselessly compressed clarity of the writing. Indeed, the almost telegraphic brevity of the poems is the volume's only concession to Transtrmer's handicap. With the exception of the four-page title poem, a meditation on Wagner's final months, most of the pieces are only a few stanzas long, yet they retain all the force of the poet's earlier work. Fulton's translations, while able, are marred by occasional inaccuracies. Alternate versions of some of the poems can be seen in Ecco Press's 1995 Transtrmer collection, For the Living and the Dead. (Sept.)\ \
