Over Oxbrobacken.

Sondrup, Steven P.

The author of nearly twenty volumes of poetry written over the last quarter of a century, Bengt Emil Johnson is a poet at home in rural central Sweden, which in the case of this poet is to say more than that he just lives there. Johnson's poetry has an immediacy and intensity with regard to the landscape of Saxdalen in southern Dalarna that bespeaks an intimate and appreciative involvement over many years. He is, however, by no means a regional poet in the more restrictive and limited sense of that expression. Although evoked in terms of the rich and varied imagery of the area, his concerns are broadly engaging.

Over Oxbrobacken begins at "Kallt nyar" (Cold New Year) and continues through the ensuing year to the following December. Cycles of poems that trace the course of the seasons have a rich tradition in Swedish literature going back to at least the eighteenth century - Hedvig Charlotte Nordenflycht, Gustaf Fredrik Gyllenborg (who was influenced by Linnaeus's passion for the precise observation of nature), and Gustav Philip Creutz, for example - and this collection is a worthy continuation of that venerable tradition. Johnson's poems focus not so much on the progress of the seasons, the months, or even holidays per se, but on subtle and easily overlooked features of the landscape and human experience that reveal themselves with particular power and clarity as the year progresses. Some of the images are particularly refreshing because they call attention to the rarely seen, while others are striking because they invite cognizance of what is seen so frequently that it is not observed: "Tradfragment eller 7 satt att betrackta ett trad" (Tree Fragments or 7 Ways to Observe a Tree).

The poems offer a welcome formal and stylistic variety. Most of them are in verse, but Johnson shows himself to be the master of the subtle nuances of the prose poem as well. They range from very brief yet powerful evocations of places and things through poems that have a more expansive and almost narrative quality. Detailed observation, coupled with highly precise and concrete language, contributes substantially to the force of the poems. But the concrete stands in a productive dialectical relationship with the aspects of life that do not readily admit of enclosure within language and can only be suggested, with each in turn providing a context within which the other can stand out in varying degrees of contrast. The subtle but dynamic tension between the specific and explicit on the one hand and the more verbally illusive on the other provides the driving energy that lifts the truth claims of these poems beyond the regional to a lyric plane inviting broad and encompassing consideration. The dust jacket is taken from an oil painting executed with wide brushes and a palette knife but seen at such close proximity that the weave of the canvas is plainly visible. In a similar way, Johnson portrays the broad sweep of his poetic vision with an undeviating attention to details.

Steven P. Sondrup Brigham Young University