Review
An astounding leap into the complex world of concrete reality; Gustafsson can reduce time past and time future into the elements of the present moment. -- Peter J. Ulisse, Small Pond Magazine
Gustafsson is altogether a poet who helps us live better. -- Stuart Friebert, Field
[H]is verse reflects the playful erudition and imaginative philosophizing that give his fiction its unique appeal. -- American Poet: Journal of the Academy of American Poets, Winter 2000-2001
Gustafsson is altogether a poet who helps us live better. -- Stuart Friebert, Field
[H]is verse reflects the playful erudition and imaginative philosophizing that give his fiction its unique appeal. -- American Poet: Journal of the Academy of American Poets, Winter 2000-2001
Book Description
A companion volume to Gustfasson's popular collection, The Stillness of the World before Bach (New Directions, 1988). Lars Gustafsson is one of Sweden's leading and most prolific men of letters; a poet, philosopher, and fiction writer with dozens of books to his credit since his literary debut, at the age of twenty, in 1956. Although known in the English-speaking world primarily for his novels, Gustafsson is nevertheless one of the most frequently translated of contemporary Swedish poets. Elegies and Other Poems is a companion volume to The Stillness of the World before Bach (New Directions, 1988). As in that earlier volume, editor Christopher Middleton has made his selection from several of the poet's books and included his own translations as well as those of others, Yvonne Sandstroem, Bill Brookshire, and Philip Martin. Readers of Gustafsson's fiction will recognize in his verse the elegant mix of intellect and sheer play, the ruminations of a mind that apprehends humanity in the riddles of the universe.
