Elegies and Other Poems

by Gustafsson, Lars; Middleton, Christopher; Brookshire, Bill; Martin, Philip; Sandstroem, Yvonne L.

• ISBN13: 9780811214414
• ISBN10: 0811214419
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-17
• Publisher: New Directions

Summary

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 and short fiction, 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 gathering, 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. ("Clocks tick tentatively in tropical rooms,/Time takes children with it, makes them grow.//Where the children stood, suddenly silence.") Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Cartoon of the Man with His Shadow Cut Off	1	(2)
Sestina on a Successful Volley [YLS]	3	(2)
Ballad of the Paths in Vastmanland	5	(2)
On Good Government	7	(3)
The Starred Sky ... [PM]	10	(1)
The Birds	11	(1)
On All That Glides in the Air	12	(2)
Birdsong, Echo of the Original Paradise	14	(2)
Meetings	16	(1)
A Letter to a Tyrant	17	(2)
Austin, Texas [YLS]	19	(3)
For All Those Who Wait for Time to Pass [YLS]	22	(1)
Elegy: On the Surface	23	(3)
Elegy for the Old Mexican Woman and Her Dead Child [YLS]	26	(3)
Elegy on the Outer Boulevards [YLS]	29	(2)
Elegy on the Density of the World	31	(2)
Elegy on Objects Mislaid and Forgotten	33	(2)
Elegy in Sorby	35	(2)
Itemized Expenses [YLS]	37	(1)
Seven Very Small Events	38	(2)
Aristotle and the Crayfish [YLS]	40	(8)
from Variations on a Theme by Silfverstolpe [BB]
The Well, Then and Forever	42	(1)
Fuga Canonica	43	(5)
The East to the Back of Me	48	(7)
Molyneux's Wife	55	(3)
Four Short Poems	58	(2)
Aunt Svea	60	(1)
Fourth Bottom	61	(1)
The Little Roads	62	(1)
The Profession	63	(2)
Smaller Gods	65	(1)
Snow Fantasia	66	(1)
Fichte and the Kerosene Lamp	67	(1)
U.S.A. in Summertime	68	(2)
Postscript	70