cover image The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Transtromer

The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Transtromer

Tomas Transtromer. Graywolf Press, $15 (97pp) ISBN 978-1-55597-351-3

Mystical, versatile and sad, the poems (in verse and prose) of Tomas Transtromer have made him Sweden's best-known living writer. Robert Bly (Eating the Honey of Words, etc.) has long championed Transtr mer; his latest effort in this line is The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Transtr mer. Here are the dream and nightmare images that influenced U.S. poetry in the '60s, where ""Moths settle down on the pane:/ small pale telegrams from the world."" Here, too, are the brief, haunting works of more recent years: ""I am carried inside/ my own shadow like a violin/ in its black case."" (Nov.)