Acknowledgments

Translations were sourced from the original Swedish, from the following titles:

För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead), 1989

Sorgegondolen (The Sorrow Gondola), 1996

Samlade dikter 1954–1996 (Collected Poems 1954–1996), 2001

Den stora gåtan (The Great Enigma), 2004

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of American Poetry Review, Blackbird, Poetry East and Smartish Pace, where many of these translations first appeared, some in slightly different versions. “Like Being a Child” was featured on the Poetry Daily website, as well as in FIELD, along with “Two Cities,” as part of Jean Valentine’s essay “Poets Without Borders.” “The Station” appeared in New Ohio Review as the focal point of my essay, “Like a Struck Tuning Fork: Translating Sound in Tranströmer’s ‘The Station.’”

I am deeply grateful to David Wojahn for his close readings of these translations and his unflagging support, as well as to Jean Valentine for introducing me to the Tranströmers. I acknowledge with gratitude the MacDowell Colony and Calderwood Foundation for the generous fellowship and support that enabled me to complete this collection. Special thanks to Dr. Edan Dekel of Williams College for his help rendering the Old Swedish in “Baltics” to a wonderful Old-Middle English. Heartfelt thanks to Marieanne Clark, Terry Johnson, Jody Gladding, Sarah Maclay, Monica Johansson and Hildred Krill. Deepest thanks to Tim, Holly and Lily Crane. I will be eternally grateful to Tomas and Monica Tranströmer for so graciously opening their home and lives to me during the years I lived in Sweden, making that time one of the personal highlights of my life.