This was Gustaf Munch-Petersen’s fourth and final poetry collection. The original was published in 1937 under the Danish title: “nitten digte” which simply means “nineteen poems”.
‘Nineteen Poems’ was the last collection Gustaf Munch-Petersen wrote before he left home to fight in the Spanish Civil War. It came after a hiatus from writing sparked, presumably, by the lack of interest in his previous collections. ‘Nineteen Poems’ marks a shift in direction from his deep dive into surrealism, towards a more sober, modernist and minimalist style. The name itself indicates the shift. ‘Nineteen Poems’ is exactly what it claims to be: a mature, sober collection consisting of nineteen poems.
I translated Gustaf Munch-Petersen’s collected poems back in early 2013 as a personal tribute, since his poetry has meant a lot to me, and it wasn’t available in English at the time.
The current version of the translations are from 2017, and the file is 22 pages long and contains – obviously – 19 poems.