The illuminating letters of the National Book Award winning poet
Robert Bly and the Nobel Prize winning poet Tomas Tranströmer
One day in spring 1964, the young American poet Robert Bly left his
rural farmhouse and drove 150 miles to the University of Minnesota
library in Minneapolis to obtain the latest book by the young Swedish
poet Tomas Tranströmer. When Bly returned home that evening with a copy
of Tranströmer's The Half-Finished Heaven, he found a letter waiting
for him from its author.
With this remarkable coincidence as its beginning, what followed was a
vibrant correspondence between two poets who would become essential
contributors to global literature. Airmail collects more than 290
letters, written from 1964 until 1990, when Tranströmer suffered a
stroke that has left him partially paralyzed and diminished his capacity
to write.
Across their correspondence, the two poets are profoundly engaged with
each other and with the larger world: the Vietnam War, European and
American elections, and the struggles of affording a life as a writer.
Airmail also illuminates the work of translation as Bly began to
render Tranströmer's poetry into English and Tranströmer began to
translate Bly's poetry into Swedish. Their collaboration quickly turned
into a friendship that has lasted fifty years.
Insightful, brilliant, and often funny, Airmail provides a rare
portrait of two artists who have become integral to each other's
particular genius. This publication marks the first time letters by Bly
and Tranströmer have been made available in the United States.
