THE BLUE HOUSE: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer
Translated by Patty Crane (Copper Canyon Press, 2023)
Winner of the 2024 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
Available wherever books are sold. To order from Copper Canyon Press, click on book image.
ABOUT The Blue House
“Patty Crane’s translations in The Blue House brilliantly present one of the greatest poetic voices of the past sixty years. Written in Swedish, Tomas Tranströmer’s work, full of cinematic imagery and wisdom, is deeply informed by his spirituality. We were equally impressed and touched by Tranströmer’s lyricism in both his early long poems and his wonderful later haiku sequences. His poems are innovative without overtly striving to be different or clever. Yet there is a profound historical sense encoded within them and the poet is not afraid to face hard historical facts. The homage these verses pay to the past, including historical figures, as well as to the fragility of life, transcend time and place, and are aesthetically grounded in our own time. Crane’s English translations get across all the nuances of Tranströmer’s solitary achievement. As she follows the supple rhythms and musicality of the original, and even more importantly, replicates the tone of Tranströmer’s often minimalistic, yet metaphysical verse, Crane and her translations leave us wonderstruck.” —Nancy Naomi Carlson, Matthias Göritz, Dorothy Bonett (judges for the 2024 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation)
“Incandescent. Crane’s translations feel as close to the original Swedish as one is likely to get. . . . This new gathering will draw readers into the poet’s grounded realm of both the familiar and the magical. . . . The Blue House will long be considered the definitive tome of Tranströmer’s work in English and should be on every poetry shelf.”—Raúl Niño, Booklist, STARRED review
“Skillfully rendered in Crane’s translations, these frequently restrained poems are studded with unforgettable phrases, weaving music, mythology, and the personal. . . . This is a revelatory gathering from one of 20th-century poetry’s most enduring presences.”—Publishers Weekly
Patty Crane’s beautifully judged translation fulfills the need for a version of Tranströmer in a current, American idiom. A must for the poetry lover’s library.”—David Woo, Lit Hub
“A poem by Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer is one in which ‘consciousness can take hold of the world/ like a hand clutching a sun-warmed stone.’ Tranströmer’s grasp is gentle, but startling surprises surface from the depths in his hand. This book is the culmination of a years-long endeavor by Patty Crane to render all of Tranströmer’s work in an English as subtle and sensitive as the poet’s original Swedish, in which ‘The shadows here are deep/ without a voice.’ There are many versions of this titanic poet in English, but this one should become the standard—Crane’s translation is the Tranströmer to read.”—Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR “Books We Love 2023”
“With memorably crafted verse covering a wealth of subjects ranging from nature to death, grieve and loss, The Blue House is especially and unreservedly recommended as a seminal and core addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library poetry collections.”—Midwest Book Review
MORE
Patty’s Interview with Daphne Stanford (Radio Boise’s The Poetry Show, January 7 & 14, 2024)
Jared M. Pollen’s astute essay about Tranströmer and The Blue House: For the Left Hand Alone (Poetry Foundation, October 30, 2023)
Patty’s essay On Translation & Influence (LitHub, October 27, 2023)