The Star By My Head: Poets from Sweden

by Milkweed Editions

Overview

Published in partnership with the Poetry Foundation, this breathtaking anthology features eight of Sweden’s most highly regarded poets.

From Edith Södergran to Gunnar Ekelöf to Nobel Prize-winning Tomas Tranströmer, Sweden has long been home to a rich and luminous poetic tradition, notable for refreshing openness, striking honesty, and a rare transcendence that often springs from a keen attention to the natural world. In the poems of The Star by My Head, which begin in the early twentieth century and come up to the present day, pinecones cluster out of reach and lilacs attempt their tentative rebirth each year. A bee makes a face like a newborn’s. A name etched in vapor on a windowpane, and its erasure, brings happiness.

With exquisite translations by internationally acclaimed poets and translators Malena Mörling and Jonas Ellerström offered alongside the Swedish originals, The Star by My Head is an essential bilingual volume and the premiere American anthology of its kind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571319036
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	11/18/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	516 KB

About the Author

Ilya Kaminsky (Series Editor) is the Director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute at the Poetry Foundation. Russian born poet and translator, he is the author of Dancing in Odessa and co-editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry.

Malena Mörling (co-editor and co-translator) was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She is the author of two books of poetry, most recently, Astoria (Univesity of Pittsburgh Press). She has received a Rona Jaffe Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. She is a Research Associate the the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, Assistant Professor in the Department of Creative Writing at The University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and on the MFA Faculty at New England College.

Jonas Ellerström (co-editor and co-translator) is a Swedish author, translator, publisher, and critic, born in Southern Sweden, now living in Stockholm. He has published poetry and essay collections in Swedish and many volumes of poetry in translation, including the works of William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, T.S. Eliot, and others.

Table of Contents

Contents

Edith Södergran (1892–1923)

Gunnar Ekelöf (1907–1968)

Werner Aspenström (1918–1997)

Tomas Tranströmer (1931–)

Tua Forsström (1947–)

Kristina Lugn (1948–)

Marie Lundquist (1950–)

Bruno K. Öijer (1951–)

Editorial Reviews

"Any book contextualizing the sheer brilliance and intense interiority of a tradition that includes Södergran, Ekelöf, and Tranströmer is bound to be an extraordinary gift, especially coming from the hands of a gifted poet and translator like Malena Mörling."
—Robert Hass, National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and former Poet Laureate of the U.S.

"The Star By My Head: Poets from Sweden provides an excellent introduction to the tradition of Modern lyric Swedish poets, poetry, and how their tradition has transformed, carried on, and influenced the world of poetry. This anthology will help influence an even greater English-speaking audience."—Poetry International

"This book won’t just tell us something about Swedish poetry, it will help us to see ourselves in a new way."
—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Dancing in Odessa and editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry

"This is a selection splendidly edited to highlight the history of what is Swedish about Swedish poetry, without avoiding the obvious fact that the younger poets are influenced by many other poetries, mostly American. The stark delight of luminous starlit nights and emotional landscapes makes this a compelling journey.”
—Andrei Codrescu, author of So Recently Rent a World

From the Publisher