The Forbidden Door - by Lasse Söderberg (Paperback)

About the Book

In The Forbidden Door, poets Carolyn Forche and Lars Gustaf Andersson masterfully translate the selected poems of Swedish poet Lasse Söderberg in one of his first substantial volumes in the English language.

Book Synopsis

In The Forbidden Door, poets Carolyn Forche and Lars Gustaf Andersson masterfully translate the selected poems of Swedish poet Lasse Söderberg in one of his first substantial volumes in the English language. Söderberg has embraced and celebrated the phantasmagoria of life itself over a span of seventy years, in verse heavily influenced by Surrealists Paz and Eluard. "The air is like gold leaf," he writes, "I take a deep breath/and become gilded inside." The author of more than thirty books of poetry, Söderberg strikes different poses - embodying different cultures and political moments - and moves easily from one reality to another. See for yourself why Ilya Kaminsky calls this "one of the most important and moving collections of poetry in translation that I have read this decade."

Review Quotes

"The Forbidden Door: The Selected Poetry of Lasse Söderberg is compiled of imagistic and dreamlike poems that travel far from the poet's native Sweden through Arthur Rimbaud's France and Frederico García Lorca's Spain, ultimately forging ties with Spanish-language poets on both sides of the Atlantic, such as César Vallejo and Octavio Paz (whom Söderberg also translated into Swedish)."

-Layla Benitez-James, Poetry Foundation