Ekelöf is a poet of surpassing stature, one of the masters of modern poetry, yet little known in America. [Selected Poems, translated by Muriel Rukeyser and Leif Sjöberg, 1967,] contains a wonderful selection of the Swedish poet's work. In it, three themes—time, death, and self—recur. In poem after poem, these themes are explored, expanded, and modified, but seldom is an idea, an image or an attitude repeated, so varied are Ekelöf's feelings and so skillful is his recording of them. His poems seem grounded in a sub-atomic physics whose laws unfold in a resonance of wild and strange language.