Winner of many prestigious awards, including the Bonner Award for Poetry, Germany's Petrarch Prize, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Tomas Transtromer captures the mood of an era which is at once lonely and threatening. Few poets are capable of relating basic truths about the human condition in troubled times with such quiet grace and figurative skill. This volume vitally represents the immense talent and insight of one of the world's finest poets.

The contemporary Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer 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 Transtromer's, as well as one of his first translators, has carefully chosen and translated the finest of Transtromer's poems to create this cherished and invaluable collection. Contents Introduction: "Upward into the Depths" by Robert Bly 1From"17 Poems" (1954)"Secrets on the Road" (1958)"The Half-Finished Heaven" (1962) Evening--MorningStormThe Man Awakened by a Song above His RoofTrackKyrieAfter the AttackBalakirev's Dream (1905)The CoupleAllegroLamentoThe Tree and the SkyA Winter NightDark Shape SwimmingThe Half-Finished HeavenNocturne 2From"Resonance and Footprints" (1966)"Night Vision" (1970) Open and Closed SpaceFrom an African DiaryMorning Bird SongsSummer GrassAbout HistoryAfter a DeathUnder PressureSlow MusicOut in the OpenSolitudeBreathing Space JulyThe Open Windows26PreludesThe BookcaseOutskirtsGoing with the CurrentTrafficNight DutyA Few MomentsThe NameStanding Up 3From"Pathways" (1973)"Truth Barriers" (1978) ElegyThe Scattered CongregationSnow-Melting Time, '66Further InLate MayDecember Evening, '72Seeing through the GroundGuard DutyAlong the Lines (Far North)At Funchal (Island of Madeira)Calling HomeCitoyensFor Mats and LailaAfter a Long Dry SpellA Place in the WoodsStreet CrossingBelow FreezingStart of a Late Autumn NovelFrom the Winter of 1947The ClearingSchubertiana 4From"The Wild Market Square" (1983)"For the Living and the Dead" (1989)"Grief Gondola" (1996) From March '79Fire ScriptBlack PostcardsRomanesque ArchesThe Forgotten CommanderVermeerThe CuckooThe Kingdom of UncertaintyThree StanzasTwo CitiesIsland Life, 1860April and SilenceGrief Gondola #2

The "Collected Poems" of one of the world's greatest living writers, Tomas Transtromer, now available in this comprehensive edition. "In day's first hours consciousness can grasp the worldas the hand grips a sun-warmed stone."Translated into fifty languages, the poetry of Tomas Transtromer has had a profound influence around the world, an influence that has steadily grown and has now attained a prominence comparable to that of Pablo Neruda's during his lifetime. But if Neruda is blazing fire, Transtromer is expanding ice. "The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems" gathers all the poems Tomas Transtromer has published, from his distinctive first collection in 1954, "17 Poems," through his epic poem "Baltics" ("my most consistent attempt to write music"), and "The Sad Gondola," published six years after he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1990 ("I am carried in my shadow / like a violin / in its black case."), to his most recent slim book, "The Great Enigma," published in Sweden in 2004. Also included is his prose-memoir "Memories Look at Me," containing keys into his intensely spiritual, metaphysical poetry (like the brief passage of insect collecting on Runmaro Island when he was a teenager). Firmly rooted in the natural world, his work falls between dream and dream; it probes "the great unsolved love" with the opening up, through subtle modulations, of "concrete words."