Classical form and contemporary images

books:


	• Alphabet (New Directions) Inger Christensen New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2001 - 64 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Classical form and contemporary images

Inger Christensen's Alphabet is a modern marvel: within the imposed form of the order of the alphabet, she constructs widely varying images, everyday-ish, fanciful, delicate, startling. "Constructs" may be the wrong verb because the language and the images appear effortlessly produced, as if they were simply evoked, although the most cursory look at the the collection shows the poet's painstaking attention to form and structure. The same quality of effortlessness, naturalness, obviousness, is exhibited by Susanne Nied's superb translation --indeed the kind of translation Gogol termed 'a transparent glass'. The personality, culture and idiosyncracies of the translator are nowhere in evidence. Subtly, skillfully, and imaginatively the Danish is transposed into English without the loss of a breath. Inger Christensen is a well-known poet in Denmark, indeed in Europe. Thanks to Susanna Nied she has been introduced to the American public, and may now at long last receive the recognition she deserves also in the US. It is a pleasure to see such lovingly crafted literature, and all involved in bringing it to the American public are to be congratulated: translator, publisher, distributor.

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A startling and gorgeous work by Denmark's most admired poet finally available in English translation. Awarded the American-Scandinavian PEN Translation Prize by Michael Hamburger, Susanna Nied's translation of alphabet introduces Inger Christensen's poetry to US readers for the first time. Born in 1935, Inger Christensen is Denmark's best known poet. Her award-winning alphabet is based structurally on Fibonacci's sequence (a mathematical sequence in which each number is the sum of the two previous numbers), in combination with the alphabet. The gorgeous poetry herein reflects a complex philosophical background, yet has a visionary quality, discovering the metaphysical in the simple stuff of everyday life. In alphabet, Christensen creates a framework of psalm-like forms that unfold like expanding universes, while crystalizing both the beauty and the potential for destruction that permeate our times.

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