Guarding the Air

Book excerpt: Gunnar Harding, perhaps the most prominent living Swedish poet after Tomas Transtromer, has won all the major Swedish literary awards, yet has scarcely been translated for English language readers. Guarding the Air: Selected Poems of Gunnar Harding presents 112 poems drawn from eleven of the thirteen books Harding has published that contain poetry in verse. The book contains a brief introduction by the translator; a useful guide to Harding's poetry in the form of his prefaces to his three Swedish volumes of selected poems; an extensive set of endnotes, many of which include or rely on comments by the poet; and an index to poem titles.