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Essays, Manifestos, Statements, Speeches, Maxims, Epistles, Diaristic Jottings, Narratives, Natural histories, Poems, Plays, Performances, Ramblings, Revelations, and all such ephemera as may appear necessary to bring society into a slight tremolo of confusion and fright at least.

Views from a Tuft of Grass

Harry Martinson

Translated from the Swedish by Lars Nordström and Erland Anderson

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Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize for Literature (with fellow Swedish writer Eyvind Johnson), Harry Martinson (1904-1978) was noted for his innovative use of language combined with his keen observations of nature. He wrote various books of poetry, including Nomad (1931), Natur (1934), Passad (1945), Cikada (1953), Gräsen I Thule (1958), Vagnen (1960), and Tuvor (1973). Martinson also wrote fiction, travel books—the most famous of which is the renowned Kap Farväl (Cape Farewell)—and volumes of nature essays, three of which were written in the 1930s, long before such interest in environmental issues became more commonplace.

Views from a Tuft of Grass, written later in his life, in 1963, continues his observations on nature, but the essays of this volume reflect a maturer and cleaner style and are less philosophically dense than the earlier works—a book translator Lars Nordström describes is a kind of coda that focuses not just on nature but explores the importance of childhood folktales, our way of viewing the world from a history of maps, and a thoughtful meditation on the way a poet ought to write his poems.