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SELECTED POEMS OF GUNNAR EKELOF, TRANSLATED BY W. H. AUDEN & LEIF SJOBERG
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1971
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 6, 2024
Remarkable command of language, showcasing his ability to delve deep into the human spirit while demonstrating linguistic skill.
Ekelöf's mastery lies in his ability to unravel the intricacies of human thought and the concept of love itself. (Raw and unfiltered reflections of his thoughts and emotions, stripped bare)
Ekelöf's mastery lies in his ability to unravel the intricacies of human thought and the concept of love itself. (Raw and unfiltered reflections of his thoughts and emotions, stripped bare)
November 14, 2023
This takes me back to my youth. On the one hand (and Ekelof likes binary pairs so I can do this) I feel the inadequacy of my 15 year old self on first encountering The Waste Land; knowing it contained profundity but unable to locate it, instead finding reasons to fail to understand it and dismissing it rather too glibly. On the other hand (certainly at first) a real feeling that the profundity was rightly dismissed as tosh and that I should be placing Ekelof along side Tony Hancock and Bill Kerr... the world is purple, I am orange.
But it began to grow on me. The music of the words rather than the exact meaning began to take its effect. The feeling of TS Eliot grew, and as with Eliot, the purpose and understanding of the verses grew. Full of opposites and not quite opposites; life and death, black and white, love and hurt, the corporeal and the shadow or the mirror image.
I had no idea we had this book. Have no idea where we got it from (though we’ve had it for decades). I read it on making a random selection from our poetry shelves. Its time I read some more anthologies through and through. (There is a huge difference in the experience of reading cover to cover compared with studying a select few). I’d never heard of Gunnar Ekelof and may never encounter him again, but I’ve enjoyed our brief period as fellow travellers.
But it began to grow on me. The music of the words rather than the exact meaning began to take its effect. The feeling of TS Eliot grew, and as with Eliot, the purpose and understanding of the verses grew. Full of opposites and not quite opposites; life and death, black and white, love and hurt, the corporeal and the shadow or the mirror image.
I had no idea we had this book. Have no idea where we got it from (though we’ve had it for decades). I read it on making a random selection from our poetry shelves. Its time I read some more anthologies through and through. (There is a huge difference in the experience of reading cover to cover compared with studying a select few). I’d never heard of Gunnar Ekelof and may never encounter him again, but I’ve enjoyed our brief period as fellow travellers.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews