Child Is Not a Knife

Goran Sonnevi is one of Sweden's most celebrated, respected, and prolific poets. For this first book-length selection of Sonnevi to appear in English, Rika Lesser has chosen works written between 1971 and 1989--although most of the poems come from the last decade and from Sonnevi's last three books, which form part of the single oandlig [unending/infinite/interminable] poem that he continues to write from book to book. Of Lesser's introduction to the work, Richard Howard writes, "e;Lesser's wonderful prose texts at the outset provide not only an ingress into complex and baffling matter but one of the most determined statements of the translator's text since Walter Benjamin."e;From "e;Aby, Oland; 1982"e;We are here in the ultimate lives of our bodiesnegations of the ultimate negationWe are complete parts of the worldWe rise up out of infinitylike the limestone flats from the sea Like the starsWe are denials of infinityOne day we shall reach all the way there