Selected Poems

New
Paperback
2015
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Poet, novelist, and philosopher Lars Gustafsson is one of Europe's leading literary figures. Much of his writing is concerned with the search for moral consciousness and the relationship between personal experience and self-awareness, imbued with a philosophically founded scepticism toward language. His poetry is renowned for relating the metaphysical to the mundane with a particular clarity and precision, illuminating the potency of ordinary objects and everyday events as he addresses critical issues that have concerned great thinkers over the centuries. His first book of poetry to be published in Britain has an introduction by Per Wastberg.

Synopsis

Poet, novelist, and philosopher Lars Gustafsson is one of Europe's leading literary figures. Much of his writing is concerned with the search for moral consciousness and the relationship between personal experience and self-awareness, imbued with a philosophically founded scepticism toward language. His poetry is renowned for relating the metaphysical to the mundane with a particular clarity and precision, illuminating the potency of ordinary objects and everyday events as he addresses critical issues that have concerned great thinkers over the centuries. His first book of poetry to be published in Britain has an introduction by Per Wastberg.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Published: 12 Nov 2015
ISBN 10: 1852249978
ISBN 13: 9781852249977

Media Reviews

'I am amazed at his imaginativeness, empathy and extraordinary divining-rod... His poems, half violent movement, half fleeting shadow, are borne by the intention to create out of experiences that have been made experiences that have not been made ... Lars Gustafsson's poetry is a song to what has been lost, to the faces that are glimpsed in train windows and never return. Cultures and epochs swirl round each other like leaves in an autumn gale and attain a balance, if not before then in the smithy of metaphors that the poet keeps heated' - Per Wastberg.; 'Lars Gustafsson has an uncompromising vision of the utter complexity of modern life... He loves to play with possibilities and solutions in a manner that is refreshingly affirmative' - The New York Times Book Review.; 'A central theme in Gustafsson's voluminous oeuvre... concerns human knowledge: how far does it reach and where lie its limits?' - World Literature Today.

Author Bio

Lars Gustafsson is one of Scandinavia's best-known authors. Born in Vasteras, Sweden, in 1936, he published his first novel Vagvila: ett mysteriespel pa prosa (Rest on the Way: A Mystery Play in Prose), at the age of 21. He is one of the most prolific Swedish writers since August Strindberg. Since the late 1950s he has produced a voluminous flow of poetry, novels, short stories, critical essays, and articles, gaining international recognition with literary awards such as the Prix International Charles Veillon des Essais in 1983, the Heinrich Steffens Preis in 1986, Una Vita per la Litteratura in 1989, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for poetry in 1994, as well as a Nobel nomination. His best-known novel - championed by John Updike - is The Death of a Beekeeper (1968). Previous English translations of his poetry published in the US include The Stillness of the World Before Bach (1988), Elegies and Other Poems (2000) from New Directions, and A Time in Xanadu (2008) from Copper Canyon. His Bloodaxe Selected Poems (2015) is his first UK poetry publication. From 1983 he served as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught Philosophy and Creative Writing, until retiring in 2006, and has held several visiting lectureships and residencies in Germany. He now divides his time between Stockholm and northern Vastmanland, Sweden.