The Half-Finished Heaven

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Overview

From the Winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature

The contemporary Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer is a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature and has a prestigious worldwide reputation. 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.

Contents

Introduction: "Upward into the Depths" by Robert Bly

From

17 Poems (1954)

Secrets on the Road (1958)

The Half-Finished Heaven (1962)

Evening—Morning Storm The Man Awakened by a Song above His Roof Track Kyrie After the Attack Balakirev's Dream (1905)

The Couple Allegro Lamento The Tree and the Sky A Winter Night Dark Shape Swimming The Half-Finished Heaven Nocturne

From

Resonance and Footprints (1966)

Night Vision (1970)

Open and Closed Space From an African Diary Morning Bird Songs Summer Grass About History After a Death Under Pressure Slow Music Out in the Open Solitude Breathing Space July The Open Window s26Preludes The Bookcase Outskirts Going with the Current Traffic Night Duty A Few Moments The Name Standing Up

From

Pathways (1973)

Truth Barriers (1978)

Elegy The Scattered Congregation Snow-Melting Time, '66

Further In Late May December Evening, '72

Seeing through the Ground Guard Duty Along the Lines (Far North)

At Funchal (Island of Madeira)

Calling Home Citoyens For Mats and Laila After a Long Dry Spell A Place in the Woods Street Crossing Below Freezing Start of a Late Autumn Novel From the Winter of 1947

The Clearing Schubertiana

From

The Wild Market Square (1983)

For the Living and the Dead (1989)

Grief Gondola (1996)

From March '79

Fire Script Black Postcards Romanesque Arches The Forgotten Commander Vermeer The Cuckoo The Kingdom of Uncertainty Three Stanzas Two Cities Island Life, 1860

April and Silence Grief Gondola #2

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Mystical, versatile and sad, the poems (in verse and prose) of Tomas Transtromer have made him Sweden's best-known living writer. Robert Bly (Eating the Honey of Words, etc.) has long championed Transtr?mer; his latest effort in this line is The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Transtr?mer. Here are the dream and nightmare images that influenced U.S. poetry in the '60s, where "Moths settle down on the pane:/ small pale telegrams from the world." Here, too, are the brief, haunting works of more recent years: "I am carried inside/ my own shadow like a violin/ in its black case." (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781555973513
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Publication date: 10/3/2001
Edition number: 1
Pages: 122
Sales rank: 156,860
Product dimensions: 6.04 (w) x 8.99 (h) x 0.36 (d)

Meet the Author

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. He lives in Stockholm.

Robert Bly was born in 1926 in Minnesota. He is a poet, essayist, cultural critic, and translator. He is the author of more than thirty works of poetry, including Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems and The Light around the Body, which received the National Book Award. As the editor of the influential publications The Fifties and The Sixties, Bly introduced many American readers to important international poets, including Pablo Neruda, Tomas Tranströmer, Cesar Vallejo, and others. Bly lives in Minneapolis.

First Chapter

The Half-Finished Heaven

By Robert Bly Tomas Transtromer

Graywolf Press

ISBN: 1-55597-351-5

Chapter One

Storm The man on a walk suddenly meets the old giant oak like an elk turned to stone with its enormous antlers against the dark green castle wall of the fall ocean. Storm from the north. It's nearly time for the rowanberries to ripen. Awake in the night he hears the constellations far above the oak stamping in their stalls. The Half-Finished Heaven Cowardice breaks off on its path. Anguish breaks off on its path. The vulture breaks off in its flight. The eager light runs into the open, even the ghosts take a drink. And our paintings see the air, red beasts of the ice-age studios. Everything starts to look around. We go out in the sun by hundreds. Every person is a half-open door leading to a room for everyone. The endless field under us. Water glitters between the trees. The lake is a window into the earth. Two Cities There is a stretch of water, a city on each side-one of them utterly dark, where enemies live. Lamps are burning in the other. The well-lit shore hypnotizes the dark shore. I swim out in a trance on the glittering dark water. A steady note of a tuba comes in. It's a friend's voice: "Take up your grave and walk."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Half-Finished Heaven by Robert Bly Tomas Transtromer Excerpted by permission.
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The Half-Finished Heaven

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Overview

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Related Subjects

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Product Details

Meet the Author

First Chapter

The Half-Finished Heaven

Graywolf Press

Chapter One

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