by Tomas Transtrer (Author), Patty Crane (Translator), Yusef Komunyakaa (Introduction by)
Nobel Prize-winner Tomas Transtrer explores the personal and political, the ecological and existential, through poems that expand like the widening scope of a telephoto lens.
With slow strokes and subtle, rich lines, The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Transtrer is evidence of a Nobel Prize-winning poet tracing the world with his pen. A stunning testament to an illustrious career, The Blue House gathers poems and writings from Transtrer's fourteen collections into a single book. Original Swedish sits alongside their English translations as Patty Crane translates his words into revelatory language acute in the understanding of human change and loss. Subtle in politics and exact in imagery, the poems of The Blue House range from agile haiku to cinematic prose. Social phenomena are observed in rich detail--a "dictator's bust" presiding over a train car of doomed passengers--and the collection is propelled by empathy and curiosity. Under Transtrer's watchful eye, no subject is overlooked: Milij Balakirev, the Russian composer; Nils Dacke, the Swedish peasant who led a rebellion against the king; and him, the stranger who forgets his name by the roadside. From the personal to the political to the existential, Transtrer's poems act as a telephoto lens, granting us reinvigorated access to the world we live in.Author Biography
About the Author
Nobel Laureate Tomas Transtrer was born in Stockholm in 1931, and studied literature and psychology at the University of Stockholm. A poet and psychologist who worked with disadvantaged youth, Transtrer authored numerous full length poetry collections translated into more than fifty languages. He died in Stockholm in 2015.About the Translator
Patty Crane is a translator and poet from Cape Cod. Her translations of Tomas Transtrer have appeared in The New York Times, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her first book-length Transtrer translation, Bright Scythe, was published by Sarabande Books (2015). Crane spent three years living in Sweden to work with Transtrer and his wife, Monica, to translate and study his work, and, in 2019 received a MacDowell fellowship to continue translating Transtrer's poetry. She currently splits her time between Massachusetts and Vermont.
Number of Pages: 536
Dimensions: 1.81 x 9.13 x 6.69 IN
Publication Date: October 31, 2023
