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