Tuesday, June 21, 2011

News at Eleven: The pairing of the eagle and the mole

is also typical of the poet's use of contraries. [Robin] Fulton has written of how [Tomas] Tranströmer's poems often work by bringing together a series of contrasts--light and dark, self and other, sleep and wakefulness--and arranging them so as to open up huge areas of experience within short lyric poems. This is what happens in the extraordinary poem "Alone". The first half of the poem describes a car accident:
The approaching traffic had huge lights.

They shone on me while I pulled at the wheel
in a transparent terror that floated like egg white.
The seconds grew--there was space in them--
they grew as big as hospital buildings.

from The Guardian: New Collected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer--review

~~~~~~~~~~~

No comments :