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.
Robert Bly (1926-2021) was an American poet, author, activist, translator, and leader of the mythopoetic men’s movement. His book Iron John: A Book About Men was a key text of the movement, and spent 62 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He won the 1968 National Book Award for poetry for his book The Light Around the Body, and was named Minnesota’s first poet laureate in 2008. He also received the Maurice English Poetry Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement.
Bly’s other poetic works include More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales, Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, and Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950-2013.
“Lusciously readable.” —Booklist
“[Airmail] is a superior exemplar of what a correspondence can be. . . . Rich in observational detail and charisma.” —The New Republic
“[A] delectable book. . . . Whether or not one is grateful for the speed and ease of electronic messaging, this marvelous collection, both entertaining and edifying, provides one opportunity to measure what has been lost.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
“Readers will find amusing, even touching, the attempts of each poet to explain linguistic nuances. . . . The love of language, poetry, family and friends, all on display in eloquent handwritten or typed letters redolent of a bygone era.” —Kirkus Reviews
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New Hope for American Art is the most comprehensive book ever published on artists from, and surrounding, the New Hope Art Colony (also known as the Pennsylvania Impressionists). This book, with its 612 pages and over 1,000 color plates of artwork include biographies of 165 individual Pennsylvania Impressionists and New Hope Modernists as well as artists from the Philadelphia Ten, a pioneering group of women all educated at Philadelphia art schools.
In this book, you'll find biographies and artwork from such artists as:
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New Hope for American Art was authored, designed and published by James M. Alterman, an expert in the field of Pennsylvania Impressionist and Modernist painting. A longtime collector and owner of two fine art galleries, Alterman wanted to create a user-friendly book intended not only to educate collectors and enthusiasts about this art but to help train one's eye. The book offers valuable tips on how to avoid common mistakes often experienced by new collectors drawn from the author's personal experiences as a collector and fine art dealer.