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Bright Scythe (seven poems)
Tomas Tranströmer
Swedish Nobel Laureate poet
Tomas Tranströmer was born in
Stockholm in 1931.
There is a quiet yearning presence
in all his work, dedicated to setting
a frame around those brief
moments of transcendence, in
language hewing as closely to the
direct experience as possible, while retaining the
authenticity of rational sense. The resulting poems are
jewel-boxes of the soul’s cusp.
On the occasion of his passing earlier this year, it is timely
to gain some further perspective on this legacy. Translator
Patty Crane had worked closely and rigorously with the
poet and his wife in Sweden to re-translate many of his
poems, rendering them in English perhaps closest to the
spirit of the originals. This volume of selected poems,
Bright Scythe
, is forthcoming very soon from Sarabande
Books. Here we present a sampling of these new
translations.