Tarkovsky's Horses and other poems
By Pia Tafdrup
2006
First Published
3.82
Average Rating
104
Number of Pages
Tarkovsky's Horses is about loss in a double sense. The themes of the poems are my father's increasing forgetfulness, his loss of his faculties and then my loss of a father. The book is a poetic portrayal of the course of an illness for which science has few words - my father begins to suffer from dementia, and then he has to go into a nursing home, where he dies. Disintegration of identity and its inexorable progress are followed through every phase, in a concrete and naked form that makes use of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The poems about a father who forgets more and more are set in a border landscape which is also not without its comical aspects. The poems narrate the drama of what it is to be a human being.
Avg Rating
3.82
Number of Ratings
62
5 STARS
19%
4 STARS
53%
3 STARS
19%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
2%
goodreads
Author
Pia Tafdrup
Author · 14 books
Pia Tafdrup is a Danish writer; primarily a poet, she has also written a novel and two plays, as well as works for radio. Pia Tafdrup's work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and her poetry collections "Spring Tide" (1989) and "Queen's Gate" (2001) have been translated into English. She was elected as a member of the Danish Literary Academy in 1989; she was awarded the Nordic Council's Literary Prize in 1999, and the Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize in 2006. In 2001, she was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog.
