North in the World : Selected Poems of Rolf Jacobsen, A Bilingual Edition

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Summary: Greenwald's translations of Jacobsen
Review: Rolf Jacobsen, who died in 1994, had a poetic career spanning more than 60 years, and Roger Greenwald's translations are a selection of the best of Jacobsen's many collections. The bi-lingual format, with Norwegian and English on facing pages, is an essential part of the reading experience, whether or not you can sound out Norwegian - and investment in a 30 minute-language tape will let you do that in a day: believe me, it is worth it. Even the visual inspection of the Norwegian text conveys an important message about the impact of Jacobsen as a modernist: almost every Norwegian word is shorter than its English conterpart, and the verbal economy in the expression of complex thoughts and ideas - for which Jacobsen strove - is often breathtaking.
Jacobsen wrote feelingly and brilliantly about the connections and correspondences between the natural, and the technological/industrial worlds. There are poems about forests, and about "antenna forests," about swarms and crowds, trees and buildings, the dark silence of the winter night, and "Thoughts uopn Listening in on a Radio Telescope."
Greenwald's translations are clear, spare, faithful, and elegant - and he knows what they can do and what they cannot - thus the original Norwegian text on the facing pages. There is an intelligent introduction (by Grenwald), and several good photos of Jacobsen - the best of which is certainly the quintessentially Norwegian frontispiece, with Jacobsen, in his 40's, writing outdoors against the background of a weathered ski hut.