Through Naked Branches: Selected Poems of Tarjei Vesaas

Tarjei Vesaas's fame as one of Norway's and Scandinavia's greatest fiction writers of the 20th century has often overshadowed his achievement as a poet. This revised bilingual selection presents, in finely honed translations, forty six poems that reveal the distinctive sensibility and voice of Vesaas the poet. In a groundbreaking introductory essay, Roger Greenwald explores why Vesaas's work has eluded many attempts at critical analysis and how it challenges received notions of modernism. A collage of excerpts from Vesaas's writings about himself and his work supplies helpful background and gives some sense of the man behind the work. Vesaas emerges from this volume as a lyric and meditative poet of uncommon depth, who renders states of being beyond the reach not only of discourse, but of most poetry as well.