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New Poems (1907–1908) represented a departure for Rilke from the traditional German lyric poetry of which he was then considered a master. Apparent in the poems is the influence of Rodin--for whom Rilke had worked—as well as other visual artists, including Hokusai, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Picasso. Rilke forced language to extremes of subtlety and refinement that only now, in Stephen Cohn's translations, is being captured properly in English.

A female contemporary of Alexander Pushkin, Liubov Krichevskaya makes her Anglophone debut in an excellent translation of her fiction, drama, and poetry, which deftly capture women’s estate in the early nineteenth century. Krichevskaya intriguingly combines Sentimentalist preoccupations—sensibility, virtue, and men’s moral reformation through confrontation with exemplary women’s passive piety—with the uncontrollable passions and volatile hero popularized by the Byronic strain of Romanticism. Her gynocentric texts poignantly convey the stringent limitations imposed upon women’s agency by a society that paradoxically credited them with the seemingly limitless capacity to exert a civilizing influence as icons of probity. Readers acquainted with Rousseau, Richardson, and Goethe will discover familiar feminized turf, but cultivated in a Russian vein.
—Helena Goscilo
Chair and Professor of Slavic, The Ohio State University

North in the World presents 121 poems by Rolf Jacobsen (1907-1994), one of Norway's greatest modern poets. Garnering the highest praise of critics, Jacobsen won many of Norway's and Sweden's most prestigious literary awards, including the Swedish Academy's Dobloug Prize and the Grand Nordic Prize, also known as the "Little Nobel." But he also has earned a wide popular audience, because ordinary readers can understand and enjoy the way he explores the complex counterpoint of nature and technology, progress and self-destruction, daily life and cosmic wonder.

Drawing from all twelve of his books, and including one poem collected posthumously, North in the World offers award-winning English translations of Jacobsen's poems, accompanied by the original Norwegian texts. The translator, the American poet Roger Greenwald, worked with Jacobsen himself to correct errors that had crept into the Norwegian texts over the years. An in-depth introduction by Greenwald highlights the main features of Jacobsen's poetry, and extensive endnotes, as well as indexes to titles and first lines in both languages, enhance the usefulness of the book for general readers and scholars alike. The result is the definitive bilingual edition of Jacobsen's marvelous poetry.