From Publishers Weekly
As translator and American poet Roger Greenwald (Connecting Flight) explains in his introduction to the bilingual volume North in the World: Selected Poems of Rolf Jacobsen, Jacobsen (1907-1994) was one of the first Norwegians to write in unrhymed free verse, to use colloquial speech and to draw on contemporary urban scenes and experiences. These poems, drawn from throughout Jacobsen's career, frequently take up new technologies and the relationship between nature and the man-made world. "Under the gutter gratings, under the moldy stone cellars, under the damp roots of avenues with linden trees and the parks' lawns: The telephone cables' nerve fibers. The gas pipes' hollow veins. Sewers."
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"But up in the day you, of course, are dancing over the asphalt with the soles of your feet on fire, and you have silk against your navel's white eye and a new coat in the sunshine. And up in the light somewhere I, of course, stand and watch how the cigarette's blue soul flutters like a chaste angel through the chestnut leaves toward eternal life. from "Metaphysics of the City"; "Discovering Jacobsen was a joy. I am grateful to his translator, Roger Greenwald." - Czeslaw Milosz; "North in the World struck me with revelatory force. Jacobsen is a brilliant and innovative poet, though his work fits no obvious mold. Roger Greenwald, himself an impressive poet, has done a rare job of translation, creating verbal objects in English that have the urgency, the simplicity, and the necessary, unforgiving depths of great poetry." - Jay Parini
