Sorrow Gondola Suite Introduction, Tomas Tranströmer, Blackbird

Patty Crane’s new translation of Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer’s 1996 book Sorgegondolen (Sorrow Gondola) offers a chance to revisit these poems, to note their resonance, and to explore the influence they exercise on other writers.

The longest poem in the book, “Sorrow Gondola No. 2,” (”Sorgegondolen nr 2”) and the work from which the volume title is taken, is inspired by Franz Liszt’s “Lugubre Gondola No. 2.” Liszt composed the funeral piece after he visited Venice, Italy in 1882 following a premonition that his son-in-law, Richard Wagner, was going to soon die.

“The gondola is heavy-laden with life, it is simple and black,” writes Tranströmer, a description that may also apply to his own poems.

In Patty Crane’s translation, Tranströmer’s poems become even more visceral, dark, and calculated.

Included here are Crane’s English translations, the poems in Swedish, a reading of three poems in Swedish by Filip Svensson, “Good Evening, Beautiful Deep,” an essay by David Wojahn, and “Letter to Tomas Tranströmer” by Jean Valentine.