Norway's Rolf Jacobsen is one of Europe's most acclaimed writers yet, as Robert Bly points out in his introduction: "This magnificent poet is so little known in the United States." This bilingual edition, which selects the best work from Jacobsen's ten volumes, will help remedy that situation.

Three dedicated translators contribute to this book. Robert Bly's translations celebrate the radiance with which Jacobsen praised the complex beauty of the Earth; Robert Hedin focuses on the countryside, creature, and star poems; and Roger Greenwald draws difficult emotions from Jacobsen's charged last poems, composed while his wife struggled with fatal illness--as when he remembers their bitter-cold wedding day during World War II:

Road to the church was blocked with barbed wire.
I remember we clambered over the rail fence of the parsonage.
--Hey, your dress is caught
--no, not there--over there.
We tramped the furrows of an ice-crusted
potato field, up to the minister
who was in his surplice and had
the Scriptures ready.
--Love is a "path" you must walk, he says. Yes, we said.
But my lord what muddy feet we had
When we got in bed that night
we cried a dab--both of us. God
knows why.
And then the long life began.

Rolf Jacobsen was born in 1907 and lived his adult life north of Oslo. He worked as a journalist and newspaper editor and played a critical role in introducing modernism to Norwegian poetry. His poetry has been translated into nearly thirty languages. A member of the Norwegian Academy of Language and Literature, he was honored with many prizes and awards, including the Norwegian Critics' Prize and the Grand Nordic Prize from the Swedish Academy. Jacobsen died in 1994.

It is the unique gift of a poet to distil a place, a moment, a feeling in such a way that draws readers into his or her intimate world, inviting them to make it their own. In Where One Voice Ends Another Begins, seventy-six extraordinary poets from across generations invite readers to experience Minnesota through hundreds of diverse and deeply personal works. Quiet observations of daily life, the effects of political movements, feelings of love lost and found are explored in the poetry of such literary greats as Louise Erdrich, Barton Sutter, Mary Carr, G. E. Patterson, and Ray Gonzalez. The nurturing song-lyrics of the early Dakota and Ojibwe offer uncommonly personal glimpses into Minnesota's past. Works by a remarkable generation of poets who emerged in the '60s -- John Berryman, Robert Bly, James Wright, and many others -- showcase an astonishing literary vitality in a place far removed from the poetry hot spots of the coasts. Poetry "is what it is because an extraordinary genius paused at that point in history and touched it," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. The poets in this collection share this amazing gift and together present a moving portrait that is Minnesota -- its people, landscape, and culture.

..".spare, psalmlike poems....Together, the poems in this beautifully translated selection...provide us with the autobiography of a poet who felt most at home during winter, in solitude. Hauge deserves a larger American readership, and this book may summon it." --"Publishers Weekly"

"(Hauge's) poetry is miniaturist, pictorial, and ruminative; personal in that his experience, cognitive and sensual observations, and intentions are everywhere in it. Yet it isn't at all confessional or self-assertive....He is a man who knows where he is and helps us feel that we can know where we are, too."--"Booklist "

"If you have a tiny farm, you need to love poetry more than the farm. If you sell apples, you need to love poetry more than the apples."--Robert Bly, from the introduction

Olav H. Hauge, one of Norway's most beloved poets, is a major figure of twentieth-century European poetry. This generous bilingual edition--introduced by Robert Bly--includes the best poems from each of Hauge's seven books, as well as a gathering of his last poems.

Ever sage and plainspoken--and bearing resemblance to Chinese poetry--Hauge's compact and classically restrained poems are rooted in his training as an orchardist, his deep reading in world literatures, and a lifetime of careful attention to the beauties and rigors of the western fjordland. His spare imagery and unpretentious tone ranges from bleak to unabashedly joyous, an intricate interplay between head and heart and hand.

"The rose has been sung about.
I want to sing of the thorns,
and the root--how it grips
the rock hard, hard
as a thin girl's hand."

During a writing career that spanned nearly fifty years, Olav H. Hauge produced seven books of poetry, numerous translations, and several volumes of correspondence. A largely self-educated man, he earned his living as a farmer, orchardist, and gardener on a small plot in the fjord region of western Norway.

The Uncommon Speech of Paradise showcases the work of 120 modern and contemporary poets from seventeen countries-Seamus Heaney, Czeslaw Milosz, Pablo Neruda, and Anna Akhmatova-as well as works by such premier American poets as John Ashbery, Rita Dove, Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, and Wallace Stevens. Together, they offer a wide variety of voices, styles, and perspectives on the theory, practice, and purpose of poetry.