Poetry
Jord og jern
Not translated into English
Rolf Jacobsen · 1933
Synopsis
The collection is divided in two: the first part gathers unconventional nature poems, the second the modern city, its sewers, its telephone wires, its power stations, its racing cars and its aeroplanes. The book does not set them against each other: nature and civilisation live side by side in it, and man belongs to both, as the title suggests. The view taken of technology remains divided, between admiration and the doubt that it makes anyone happier.
Context
The collection appeared in 1933; a second followed in 1935, then sixteen years of silence until 1951. The Norwegian school portal stresses a simple, direct language in free form, at a time when the country's poetry kept a pompous tone: others had given up rhyme before him, but no Norwegian poet had brought the modern world into the poem to such an extent. The work has been translated into more than twenty languages; in French, a selection appeared in 1991 under the title Pierre et lumière.
Who it is for
Short poems in simple language; the collection does not exist in French, where only a selection of the work has appeared.
Prizes and reception
Norway's national school resource counts its author among the country's greatest lyric poets, and this first book brought the modern city into his poetry.
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