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Truth Barriers
The Swedish poet's works reflect the technological nature of his homeland, including poems in Swedish and English which tell of man's alienation, bleak landscapes, and confrontations which yield connections
- GenresPoetrySwedish Literature
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
36 people want to read
About the author
Tomas Tranströmer
155 books389 followersHis poetry, building on Modernism, Expressionism, and Surrealism, contains powerful imagery concerned with issues of fragmentation and isolation. “He has perfected a particular kind of epiphanic lyric, often in quatrains, in which nature is the active, energizing subject, and the self (if the self is present at all) is the object,” notes critic Katie Peterson in the Boston Review.
Critic and poet Tom Sleigh observed, in his Interview with a Ghost (2006), that “Tranströmer’s poems imagine the spaces that the deep then inhabits, like ground water gushing up into a newly dug well.”
His honors include the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, the Aftonbladets Literary Prize, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Oevralids Prize, the Petrarch Prize in Germany, the Swedish Award from International Poetry Forum,the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize, and especially the 2011 Nobel Prize in literature. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages.
Tranströmer suffered a stroke in 1990, and after a six-year silence published his collection Sorgegondolen (Grief Gondola) (1996). Prior to his stroke, he worked as a psychologist, focusing on the juvenile prison population as well as the disabled, convicts, and drug addicts. He lives in Sweden.
On Thursday, 6th of October 2011 he was awarded the Nobel prize in Literature "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".
Critic and poet Tom Sleigh observed, in his Interview with a Ghost (2006), that “Tranströmer’s poems imagine the spaces that the deep then inhabits, like ground water gushing up into a newly dug well.”
His honors include the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, the Aftonbladets Literary Prize, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Oevralids Prize, the Petrarch Prize in Germany, the Swedish Award from International Poetry Forum,the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize, and especially the 2011 Nobel Prize in literature. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages.
Tranströmer suffered a stroke in 1990, and after a six-year silence published his collection Sorgegondolen (Grief Gondola) (1996). Prior to his stroke, he worked as a psychologist, focusing on the juvenile prison population as well as the disabled, convicts, and drug addicts. He lives in Sweden.
On Thursday, 6th of October 2011 he was awarded the Nobel prize in Literature "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 28, 2024
Totuudenkynnys (luin tämän Kootuista teoksista, Tammi 2011, suom. Caj Westerberg) ei nouse suosikkieni joukkoon, mutta on tälläkin ehdottomasti hetkensä. Runot ovat paikoin pitkiä, jopa useampisivuisia, jolloin niiden sisältämät fragmentit nousevat tärkeään rooliin.
January 7, 2017
"A few books I've just read sail by like schooners on the way to the Bermuda Triangle, where they will disappear without a trace."
Luckily Tomas Tranströmer does not write those kinds of books. There are images and phrases here that will stay with me a long time. Largely prose poems, the passages here unfold like an old, trusty sweater from the ceder chest. His tone is sober but warm, like a morning in a cabin in the Swedish woods. Perfect poetry to get lost in. Despite references to technology and modern society, these poems are best read alone, not in a cafe or public place. It's worth spending the time to allow yourself to zone/Zen out to his easy flow of words and complex feelings.
The book is quite short, but it seems to be one of a few standalone titles translated into English, so it's worth tracking down whole. Not sure if the subsequent "selected poems" collections reprinted this whole collection, but they certainly should - they're that good.
Some favorite passages from the book and the introduction:
Task: to be where I am [...]
But to be where I am...and to wait:
I am full of anxiety, obstinate, confused.
Things not yet happened are already here!
I feel that. They're just out there:
a murmuring mass outside the barrier.
(from "Sentry Duty", from Friends, You Drank Some Darkness
"The birthmark of death grows at a different pace with each of us."
On the beach there's a seafood place, simple, just a shack thrown up by the survivors of the shipwreck. Many turn back at the door, but not the sea winds. A shadow stands deep inside his smoky hut frying two fish according to an old recipe from Atlantis, tiny garlic explosions, oil running over sliced tomatoes, every morsel says that the ocean wishes us well, a humming from the deep places.
----
How much we have to take on trust every minute we
live in order not to drop through the earth!
Take on trust the snow masses clinging to rockslides
over the town.
Take on trust the unspoken promises, and the smile
of agreement, trust that the telegram does not concern us,
and that the sudden ax blow from inside is not coming.
Trust the axles we ride on down the thruway among the
swarm of steel bees magnified three hundred times.
But none of that stuff is really worth the trust we have.
The five string instruments say that we can take something
else on trust, and they walk with us a bit on the road.
As when the light bulb goes out on the stair, and the
hand follows--trusting it--the blind banister rail that
finds its way in the dark.
Luckily Tomas Tranströmer does not write those kinds of books. There are images and phrases here that will stay with me a long time. Largely prose poems, the passages here unfold like an old, trusty sweater from the ceder chest. His tone is sober but warm, like a morning in a cabin in the Swedish woods. Perfect poetry to get lost in. Despite references to technology and modern society, these poems are best read alone, not in a cafe or public place. It's worth spending the time to allow yourself to zone/Zen out to his easy flow of words and complex feelings.
The book is quite short, but it seems to be one of a few standalone titles translated into English, so it's worth tracking down whole. Not sure if the subsequent "selected poems" collections reprinted this whole collection, but they certainly should - they're that good.
Some favorite passages from the book and the introduction:
Task: to be where I am [...]
But to be where I am...and to wait:
I am full of anxiety, obstinate, confused.
Things not yet happened are already here!
I feel that. They're just out there:
a murmuring mass outside the barrier.
(from "Sentry Duty", from Friends, You Drank Some Darkness
"The birthmark of death grows at a different pace with each of us."
On the beach there's a seafood place, simple, just a shack thrown up by the survivors of the shipwreck. Many turn back at the door, but not the sea winds. A shadow stands deep inside his smoky hut frying two fish according to an old recipe from Atlantis, tiny garlic explosions, oil running over sliced tomatoes, every morsel says that the ocean wishes us well, a humming from the deep places.
----
How much we have to take on trust every minute we
live in order not to drop through the earth!
Take on trust the snow masses clinging to rockslides
over the town.
Take on trust the unspoken promises, and the smile
of agreement, trust that the telegram does not concern us,
and that the sudden ax blow from inside is not coming.
Trust the axles we ride on down the thruway among the
swarm of steel bees magnified three hundred times.
But none of that stuff is really worth the trust we have.
The five string instruments say that we can take something
else on trust, and they walk with us a bit on the road.
As when the light bulb goes out on the stair, and the
hand follows--trusting it--the blind banister rail that
finds its way in the dark.
October 22, 2011
This record is horrible! The title is wrong, as is the author. Bly is the translator. Must get this fixed.
It was OK. Had some decent lines but, in general, only one poem appealed to me in its entirety. I am in possession of Selected Poems, 1954-1986, which encompasses this book more to the more recent end, so I will see if I perhaps like some of his earlier stuff better.
It was OK. Had some decent lines but, in general, only one poem appealed to me in its entirety. I am in possession of Selected Poems, 1954-1986, which encompasses this book more to the more recent end, so I will see if I perhaps like some of his earlier stuff better.
March 14, 2014
Sanningsbarriären o "La barrera de la verdad" contiene varios de los mejores poemas de Tranströmer (Schubertiana, La galería), así como parte de su prosa poética, desafortunadamente pocas veces mencionada.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews