Airmail: the Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Transtromer

Bly, Robert; & Transtromer, Tomas, Illustrated by:

ISBN 10: 1555976395 / ISBN 13: 9781555976392

Published by Graywolf Press, 2013

DJ: Some rubbing & edgewear; placed in protective cover. Book: Some rubbing & edgewear; some yellowing; overall clean & tight. 474 pages. Seller Inventory # 44509

Synopsis:

The illuminating letters of the National Book Award winning poet Robert Bly and the Nobel Prize winning poet Tomas Tranströmer

One day in spring 1964, the young American poet Robert Bly left his rural farmhouse and drove 150 miles to the University of Minnesota library in Minneapolis to obtain the latest book by the young Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. When Bly returned home that evening with a copy of Tranströmer's The Half-Finished Heaven, he found a letter waiting for him from its author.

With this remarkable coincidence as its beginning, what followed was a vibrant correspondence between two poets who would become essential contributors to global literature. Airmail collects more than 290 letters, written from 1964 until 1990, when Tranströmer suffered a stroke that has left him partially paralyzed and diminished his capacity to write.

Across their correspondence, the two poets are profoundly engaged with each other and with the larger world: the Vietnam War, European and American elections, and the struggles of affording a life as a writer. Airmail also illuminates the work of translation as Bly began to render Tranströmer's poetry into English and Tranströmer began to translate Bly's poetry into Swedish. Their collaboration quickly turned into a friendship that has lasted fifty years.

Insightful, brilliant, and often funny, Airmail provides a rare portrait of two artists who have become integral to each other's particular genius. This publication marks the first time letters by Bly and Tranströmer have been made available in the United States.

About the Authors:

Robert Bly (1926-2021) was an American poet, author, activist, translator, and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His book Iron John: A Book About Men was a key text of the movement, and spent 62 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He won the 1968 National Book Award for poetry for his book The Light Around the Body, and was named Minnesota's first poet laureate in 2008. He also received the Maurice English Poetry Award, and the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement.

Bly's other poetic works include More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales, Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, and Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950-2013.

Tomas Tranströmer (1933-2015) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011. His books of poetry, which have been translated into sixty languages, include The Deleted World and The Half-Finished Heaven, and he received numerous international honors during his lifetime. Tranströmer, a trained Swedish psychologist, worked for years in state institutions with juveniles and the disabled, and his work was often praised for the inventive ways in which it examined the mind. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy stated that "through his condensed, translucent images, he gave us fresh access to reality."

Bibliographic Details

Title: Airmail: the Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas...
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Publication Date: 2013
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: VG
Dust Jacket Condition: VG
Edition: First Printing.