Tomas Transtromer is the kind of poet I ought to love. For one thing, he has a gift for coming up with extended metaphors that ring entirely true and yet are so deliciously fresh that you can almost smell them:

“At road’s end I see power
and it’s like an onion
with overlapping faces
coming loose one by one..."

Transtromer's gift for conjuring outlandish-yet-precise metaphors reminded me of Yehuda Amichai, long one of my favorite poets. It also reminded me of Aristotle, who, in his Poetics, praised such inspired metaphor-making as "the greatest gift by far [that a poet can have], the one thing that cannot be learnt from others."

Why, then, did I not love this book as much as I loved, say, my treasured tome of Yehuda Amichai poems? I think it had something to do with the voice in Transtromer's poems. This voice was always the same voice, the voice of a European man who might well be Transtromer himself, the voice of a mild-mannered person who is always standing as if at a window and calmly observing things (nature, society, etc.) from the outside, from a distance. (Railroads and postal mail are frequently recurring motifs in Transtromer's poems, symbols of the large distances between human beings that make Transtromer's emotional distance from his subjects all the more conspicuous.) I was not at all surprised to learn that Transtromer at one time worked as a clinical psychologist, as people who work in the clinical professions are specially trained to manifest this kind of equanimity, impersonality, and emotional detachment in their dealings with others. It's a feature that some clinician-writers succeed in transcending in their writing, but which many unfortunately do not. Transtromer does sometimes transcend it, and when he does, his poems are magnificent, as in the case of the refreshingly fury-laced poem "Schubertiana":

"Annie said, 'This music is so heroic,' and she's right.
But those whose eyes enviously follow men of action, who secretly despise themselves for not being murderers,
don't recognize themselves here,
and the many who buy and sell people and believe that everyone can be bought, don't recognize themselves here.
Not their music."

How I enjoyed seeing the fire break through the ice in this poem! Even when such marvelous duende is absent, though, there is much in Transtromer's poems to catch one's interest, from an intellectual standpoint. This poet is the product of many far-flung influences, and it tickled me to watch him pay homage to such unexpected intellectual forebears as Thoreau and Whitman, the latter of whom he evokes in the poem "Traffic":

"downward, to the openings, to the deep tubes
where the algae grow like the beards of the dead"

Another poet whom I was surprised to see Transtromer show an affinity for was Paul Celan, whose ghost seemed to hover over Transtromer's poem "Night Duty":

“The language marches in step with the executioners.
Therefore we must get a new language.”

Overall, I am glad I read this collection. Poems like "Allegro," "Slow Music," and "The Gallery" will be treats to return to in years to come.

The autobiographical section was particularly interesting. The rest didn't totally resonate with me.

Sigh. I am having major difficulties liking this book. Maybe the translations are bad. The writing did not engage me. Maybe after a pot of coffee, some donuts (for their sugar content) and a few more years, I'll be wedded to Tranströmer's poetry. It's not happening now. It's like waiting for the light to come on and I'm just really stumbling around in the dark trying to get my bearings.

Tomas Tranströmer (1931-2015) is considered one of the best poets of the late 20th century, officially confirmed by his Nobel Prize in 2011. Reading this collected work immediately reveals his technical mastery. Sometimes Tranströmer is wrongly ranked among the surrealists. But that's only because his technique consists in associating the most improbable images with each other, which sometimes comes across as slightly surreal. But it is precisely this association that creates a field of tension and thus opens up unsuspected perspectives. Take this sober Postludium:

I drag like a grapnel over the world's floor—
everything catches that I don't need.
Tired indignation. Glowing Resignation.
The executioners fetch stone. God writes in the sand.

Silent rooms.
The furniture stands in the moonlight, ready to fly.
I walk slowly into myself
through a forest of empty suits of armor.

Yet I have to say that I am not completely captivated by his poetry. It strikes me that Tranströmer mainly focuses on the external world, especially nature, and completely ignores both the inner-personal and the relating to other people. You will hardly find a reference to these existential aspects - and of 'emotions' in general - in his poems. And that gives his poetry something distant and aloof, which is reinforced by precisely that connection of separate, external things. That makes Tranströmer a little less appealing to me. But as mentioned, his technical superiority, which is expressed, for example, in deceptively simple verses (as in his haiku), cannot be doubted.

This collection of poetry, from the whole of Transtromer's career, more than justifies the stamp of "Nobel Prize Winner" that is printed on the cover. Shamefully, I had never heard of this Swedish born poet until the week before he won the prize. I had read an article that highlighted him as a frontrunner for the prize this year and I began to seek out his poetry. It took a bit of patience, and I urge anyone to first flip around in the book for awhile until they find the right poem that speaks to them, but once I caught the cadence of his thoughts (it was the poem A Winter Night for me), the gates opened and I was ushered into Transtromer's beautiful, and sometimes sad, vision of life. I have been bursting with nothing but praise for him ever since. His prose is very lucid and ethereal, creating a seemingly weightless reality that hovers just above and beyond our own. It called to mind a quote from the Polish author, Bruno Schulz. Schulz, in the introduction of his "The Streets Of Crocodiles", says there are images that "...are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw fearing to lose their integrity in the frailty of realization." Transtromer builds up just these sorts of images that dwell in the peripherals of existence as he speaks of death, islands, shadows, trains, memories and the absurdity of our position in life.

"I am transparent/and writing becomes visible/inside me" he writes in the poem "Further In". Much of his poetry comes from life experiences, which pass through him ("I am the turnstile" - The Outpost) and out through his pen into insightful observations on the human condition. His shorter poems often times give the reader cryptic metaphors or a simple weightless image to ponder, such as the "bridge builds itself/slowly/straight out in space" (Snow Is Falling), but it is in the longer poems where Transtromer works his real magic. In poems such as The Gallery, Night Duty or Traffic, to name a few, Transtromer weaves a variety of metaphors and images into one powerful theme. He also spends much time detailing the seasons, from lush green summers to cold, dead winters. There is a moment where he describes spring as the trees turning back to face him as he and the earth run towards each other. There is so much joy and love for the world and existence to be found within his words. In later poems, specifically poems written after his stroke, death becomes a prevalent theme as he shows us all existing within its inevitable shadow.

Give Transtromer a try. If you are patient it will really pay off and you will never view the world around you the same again. He gives us, as he puts it in a haiku:
Thoughts standing still, like
the colored mosaic stones in
the palace courtyard.

I haven't actually "read" the whole book, but finished most of it and found it rather slow going. Although I appreciate Tranströmer, I find it often hard to connect. I'm sure the failure is all mine...

I picked this up mostly because it was convenient (my local public library had it) and because it is the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. So, given I had not really heard of this author before, I was curious. I gave it a low rating because, for me, the book was just ok. I think other people may have a higher opinion, and that is ok. This book has some positives and some negatives. On the positive, when the author is good, he is good. There are some very rich images, very evocative of dreams and imagination. However, a lot of this poetry does seem pretty dark and depressing. I am not sure if that is just reflective of the fact he is Swedish, and a lot of the poetry is set up there in Scandinavia, where days can be very gray for very long, but some of the poetry could be right down depressing. Or at least, the kind of poetry to read in a winter's night when you have to stay inside with your hot beverage and a blanket. This is definitely not summer reading.

I did like the earlier works better than the later works. The book collects all his work, according to the introduction, and it is arranged chronologically. I would advise reading this book in small doses. Maybe that is why I just liked it so-so. I read all through it, and this book is best read in small doses. In fact, maybe reading a part of it now, and then putting it aside and picking it up again later, may be the better option. So, for me, it was just alright. And if nothing else, I got to read a Nobel Laureate's work.