The Forbidden Door: The Selected Poetry of Lasse Söderberg
Sweden’s foremost living poet, Lasse Söderberg appears here in the first comprehensive selection of his poetry in English, masterfully translated by one of America’s leading poets, Carolyn Forche, in collaboration with celebrated Swedish writer and translator Lars Gustaf Andersson.
The Forbidden Door invites readers to encounter a singularly emancipated sensibility for whom language serves as an instrument of transformation: “The air is like gold leaf,” he writes. “I take a deep breath/and become gilded inside.”
Inspired by both French and Spanish surrealists, Söderberg’s work reflects his singular synthesis of different cultures and political moments, gliding effortlessly from one reality to another: “When I got up from the park bench/I let my melancholy stay there.” As the translators note in a brief but illuminating introduction, “to be within poetry to is to be attentive toward everything that happens, including political life.”
Readers passing through his doors will quickly see why Ilya Kaminsky calls this “one of the most important and moving collections of poetry in translation that I have read this decade.”
“The Forbidden Door: The Selected Poetry of Lasse Söderberg, beautifully translated by Lars Gustaf Andersson and Carolyn Forché, is one of the most important and moving collections of poetry in translation that I have read this decade. There is a vividness in the lyrics herein that doesn’t just allow us to see our world, but also helps us to see its mysterium. There is shimmering quality to the language, one that opens the door to the labyrinth of being. If clarity is the deepest mystery, one sees this notion come to life in these precise translations of this major Swedish poet.”
—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Dancing in Odessa & Deaf Republic
“Lasse Söderberg is one of Sweden’s most highly regarded poets. His gaze is soulful and evocative—it dissolves what is complicated or unnecessary, revealing an immediacy and rare clarity of light, trees, stones, fellow humans as they are. Every poem is framed by a resonant silence. This exquisite collection has finally arrived in English in the vivid and eloquent translations of Lars Gustaf Andersson and Carolyn Forché.”
—Malena Mörling, author of Astoria