It

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New Directions Publishing, 2006 - Poetry - 237 pages
it is the masterwork by Danish poet Inger Christensen ("a true singer of the syllables," said C. D. Wright), often cited as a Nobel contender and one of Europe's most revered poets. On its publication in 1969, it took Denmark by storm, winning critical praise and becoming a huge popular favorite. Translated into many languages, it won international acclaim and is now a classic of modern Scandinavian poetry.

it is both a collection of poems and a single poetic epic, forming a philosophical statement on the nature of language, perception, and reality. The subject matter, though, is down to earth: amoebas, stones, and factories; fear, sea urchins, and mental institutions; sand, sexuality, and song. The words and images of it recur in ways reminiscent of Christensen's other works, but here is a younger poetry, wilder, and crackling with energy. The marvelous and complex use of mathematical structure in it is faithfully captured in Susanna Nied's English translation, which won a 2005 PEN Translation Fund Award.
 

Contents

LOGOS
23
STAGE symmetries
25
transitivities
33
continuities
41
connectivities
49
variabilities
59
extensions
68
integrities
77
extensions
133
integrities
141
universalities
149
TEXT symmetries
157
transitivities
165
continuities
173
connectivities
181
variabilities
189

universalities
85
ACTION symmetries
93
transitivities
101
continuities
109
connectivities
117
variabilities
125
extensions
197
integrities
205
universalities
213
EPILOGOS
221
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

Writer Inger Christensen was born in Vejle, Denmark on January 16, 1935. She enrolled in medical school, but had to withdraw due to financial reasons. She received a teaching degree with a concentration in German and mathematics from the Aarhus College of Education. She was a teacher for a few years before becoming a full-time writer. She wrote poems, essays, short stories, children's books, and plays. Her works include It, Alphabet, Butterfly Valley: A Requiem, The Painted Room, and Azorno. She received numerous awards throughout her career including the 1994 Nordic Authors' Prize. She died on January 2, 2009 at the age of 73. Susanna Nied 's work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies. Her translation of It won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award in 2007. Anne Carson was born December 16, 1950. Carson is a poet, an essayist, and a classicist. She is the director of the graduate program in Classics at McGill University, where she also teaches Latin and Greek. Carson is perhaps besst know for Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, which won the 1998 QSPELL Prize for Poetry. Carson recently won the 2001 Griffin Poetry Prize for Men in the Off Hours. Carson also won the T.S. Eliot poetry prize for The Beauty of the Husband, the first woman to win the award in its nine-year history. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998 and received a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship in 2000. Carson is the author of seven books.

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