The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780811216722)

In day's first hours consciousness can grasp the world
as the hand grips a sun-warmed stone.

Translated into fifty languages, the poetry of Tomas Transtromer 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, Transtromer is expanding ice. The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems gathers all the poems Tomas Transtromer 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 Runmaro 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."

Author: Tomas Transtromer
ISBN-10: 0811216721
ISBN-13: 9780811216722
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Language: English
Published: 10/17/2006
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/18/2006 pg. 37