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, The New Yorker

At long last, the collected poems of one of the world’s greatest living writers, Tomas Tranströmer, is now available in this comprehensive edition.

The Great Enigma

by Tomas Tranströmer

Translated from Swedish by Robin Fulton

Translated into fifty languages, the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer 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, Tranströmer is expanding ice. The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems gathers all the poems Tomas Tranströmer 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 Runmarö 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.”

Paperback(published Oct, 01 2007)

ISBN
9780811216722
Price US
18.95
Price CN
21
Trim Size
6x9
Page Count
288

Ebook(published Oct, 01 2007)

ISBN
9780811220170
Price US
17.95
Page Count
288
Portrait of Tomas Tranströmer

Tomas Tranströmer

Swedish poet and Nobel Laureate

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, The New Yorker

The Nobel Prize to Mr. Tranströmer is a momentary defeat for ideology and a great victory for poetry.

Michael Moynihan, The Wall Street Journal

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