The Half-Finished Heaven

The contemporary Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer has a prestigious worldwide reputation; many expect that he will someday win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Robert Bly, a longtime friend and confidant of Tranströmer's, as well as one of his first translators, has carefully chosen and translated the finest of Tranströmer's poems to create this cherished and invaluable collection.

Contents

Introduction: "Upward into the Depths" by Robert Bly

1
From
17 Poems (1954)
Secrets on the Road (1958)
The Half-Finished Heaven (1962)

Evening—Morning
Storm
The Man Awakened by a Song above His Roof
Track
Kyrie
After the Attack
Balakirev's Dream (1905)
The Couple
Allegro
Lamento
The Tree and the Sky
A Winter Night
Dark Shape Swimming
The Half-Finished Heaven
Nocturne

2
From
Resonance and Footprints (1966)
Night Vision (1970)

Open and Closed Space
From an African Diary
Morning Bird Songs
Summer Grass
About History
After a Death
Under Pressure
Slow Music
Out in the Open
Solitude
Breathing Space July
The Open Window
Preludes
The Bookcase
Outskirts
Going with the Current
Traffic
Night Duty
A Few Moments
The Name
Standing Up

3
From
Pathways (1973)
Truth Barriers (1978)

Elegy
The Scattered Congregation
Snow-Melting Time, '66
Further In
Late May
December Evening, '72
Seeing through the Ground
Guard Duty
Along the Lines (Far North)
At Funchal (Island of Madeira)
Calling Home
Citoyens
For Mats and Laila
After a Long Dry Spell
A Place in the Woods
Street Crossing
Below Freezing
Start of a Late Autumn Novel
From the Winter of 1947
The Clearing
Schubertiana

4
From
The Wild Market Square (1983)
For the Living and the Dead (1989)
Grief Gondola (1996)

From March '79
Fire Script
Black Postcards
Romanesque Arches
The Forgotten Commander
Vermeer
The Cuckoo
The Kingdom of Uncertainty
Three Stanzas
Two Cities
Island Life, 1860
April and Silence
Grief Gondola #2

Tomas Tranströmer is the author of eleven books of poetry and a prose memoir, Memories See Me. His work has been translated into thirty languages, and has received the Petrach Prize in Germany, the Bellman Prize, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, the Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Robert Bly is a poet, essayist, cultural critic, and translator. He won the 1968 National Book Award in Poetry, and his recent books of verse include Morning Poems, Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems, and The Night Abraham Called to the Stars.