cover image The Other Side of Landscape: An Anthology of Contemporary Nordic Poetry

The Other Side of Landscape: An Anthology of Contemporary Nordic Poetry

, . . Slope, $22 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-9718219-8-9

Widening our view of contemporary world poetry, this anthology presents—in fluid translations by, among others, Rika Lesser and Anselm Hollo—17 poets born after 1962 from Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway. While their names may sound unfamiliar to most Americans, the formal, linguistic and tonal variety won't. In wrestling with the usual modern and postmodern problems of politics, individual and collective consciousness, anomie and violence, irony, humor and surprise provide one approach: a deliveryman enters a room, asking, "did you order a revolution?" Elsewhere, a poem called "Autobiography" notes, "We are all/ ground beef." These poems also fuse physical and imaginary worlds: "I knew a man who searched for the city in his body," begins a prose poem. Rebellious and subversive, other poems announce the poets' arrival ("I am here"), but also their complicated ambivalence ("I am my own opposition"); sometimes they insult and threaten ("Piss off, you jerk or I'll cut off your legs"). Whether praying for a couple's bliss or noting that not even the sun is immortal, the best of these reveal a contemporary Nordic beauty: "The keynote is wonder... Here come the warm currents." (July)