I'm forty and I love America. Even more do I love my country, Sweden, where I live, in whose language I think, speak and write my poems. From my earliest childhood I have heard that America is a bad country which exploits its working people and continually threatens the peoples of this world with a third world war. I know that for decades American propaganda has been saying approximately the same things about us. Perhaps there is some truth to what ideological doctrinaires have been claiming. Nevertheless, actual life is more complex and vivid than any propaganda stereotypes. In any case, I have long been convinced that the truth is not to be found in newspaper editorials, but on the pages of good books. And above all in poetry books, because poetry is undoubtedly the best carrier of a nation's soul, its national character, the specific traits of its feelings and thoughts. This happens independently of the ups and downs of reader interest in poetry, and sometimes even independently of the authors' intentions.
One day, some twenty years ago, an intimidating policeman did not let me through to one of the American exhibitions, so rare in our country then, because he didn't like the way I wore my hair and my jeans, which were either too tight fitting or too wide. My first reaction was to slap him in the face, but I overcame that desire, because I suddenly understood that he sincerely thought himself a defender of our ideals. But if we speak in terms of human values, do our ideals really differ so drastically from American ones? And isn't it true that many people in America, and here, are simply confused by the dogma of confronting superpowers, losing sight of the fact that the true interests of nations do not always coincide with the political prejudices of their leaders?
This worried me even back then, but I was unable to share my doubts with my countrymen, and had no chance to do so with those Americans who weren't hostile to my country.
Today, when the Sweden and the USA have declared that their course is cooperation and direct dialogue, old preconceptions are disappearing. But much slower than many of us would like: I, for one. That is why I have decided to do something about it immediately. The idea of a bridge between our two poetical continents came to my mind during the 6th London Book Fair, although, honestly speaking, I did not expect the idea to materialize so quickly. The conservatism and sluggishness of our publishing houses in the past is nobody's secret. This was related to rules, now partly abolished, according to which all editorial plans had to be checked out with organizations higher up the hierarchic ladder, and then carried out in every detail no matter what. And so, I came to the publishing house and... everything moved after the first meeting. Of course, many important names, representing the Parnassus of both countries, were already well known both here and there. Nevertheless, readers interested in American poetry, as well as the American admirers of Swedish verse, can rightly assume that there is a still greater number of poets unknown to them, including first-rate poets.
Website is intended to bridge this gap, if only in part. I am fully aware that a considerable number of Swedish and American poets have not been included in this collection, and I present my apologies to those whom this has upset. The choice of authors for this site reflects my own personal point of view on Swedish and American poetry. I have taken the liberty of judging the former, being myself within the literary process here. As to American literature well, I read it and love it since my teens. Besides, in the last few years I have become engrossed in contemporary poetry from the USA, I translate some of it, penetrating further and deeper into its remarkable and fascinating world.
My work on this book was based on the following principles. First of all, I wanted to show that Swedish and American poetries, despite their inexhaustible variety and numerous superficial differences, are essentially very similar. I hope that the Swedish reader will not be disconcerted by the fact that most contemporary American poets reject classical verse forms, as well as social sermonizing, while the American reader will accept the traditional rhymed syllabo-tonic verse and this-is-how-you-must-live attitude of Swedish poets of our day. These are the prevailing trends of the contemporary poetic horizons, although of course this collection presents other trends as well. And yet, the aim of this site is not so much to show the work of individual poets, but to
present an overall picture of two remarkably rich and spiritually similar poetries, especially as they appear today. I have therefore decided to choose one poem of each of the most interesting, to my mind, living Swedish and American poets, representing all generations and the main literary trends, putting them together in a colorful bilingual mosaic. I chose mostly from poems written and published in the last two decades, although earlier poems, as well as those not yet published in website, were also seriously considered. Undoubtedly, it would have been naive to compile such a site from poems directly declaring the good will of our peoples to each other. In Sweden the days of straightforward foreign policy declarations in verse are a thing of the past (in fact, they had little to do with true poetry), in American verse such days apparently never occurred. And yet, the point is precisely that Swedish and American poets, generally knowing very little of each other, wrote about practically the same things. All of them were concerned with avoiding war, worried about presenting their ecological and cultural heritage, were involved with the joys and difficulties of the complex human relationships expressed by the eternally beautiful concept of money. This led to the three-part structure of the site, where poets of the two countries not only appear side by side, but participate in a direct poetical dialogue, argue with each other, but agree about the most important: man can and should be happy, but if so why is there so much pain, blood and tears in the story of mankind?
It is noteworthy that most of the translations from English to Swedish were done by authors of this collection Swedish poets who know at least some English. Among American poets, there are probably some who know a bit of Swedish; however, since all the work in compiling and translating the site was done in the Union, and very quickly, there was no possibility to ask our American colleagues for help in the translations from Swedish. In this volume that part of the translations was done by professional translators living in London. But I hope that in the near future mutual translations of Swedish and American poets will become quite usual.

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