Many critics consider Gunnar Ekelöf to be the greatest living Swedish poet. He reached out early in his career to two sources outside the Scandinavian tradition: to the mystical poetry of Persia in particular, and the Orient in general, and to French poetry, especially the surrealist poetry of the late 'twenties. His poetry has deep roots also in Fröding, Almqvist, and the Swedish fairy tales.

In Swedish literature there is a much firmer division between the 'country' and the 'city' writing than there is in America or England. There has been a succession of great writers in Sweden each of whom has taken his place naturally in one of these two groups. Gunnar Ekelöf very clearly belongs to the second group, the writers that are Europeanized, ascetic, intellectual; and he is a supreme example of the greatness possible in that tradition.

Some of Gunnar Ekelöf's poems are made of linked successions of thoughts not easy to follow. We have no poet like him in English or American poetry. The subtle thoughts are embodied in high-spirited and eccentric language…. He is an uncomfortable poet; he tries to make the reader conscious of lies and of the unstable and shifty nature of the human ego.

His poems float along like souls above the border between religion and witchcraft.

We find him urging the reader to 'give up power', admonitions like those found in Persian mystics or in the Tao Te Ching. And it is clear Ekelöf understands very well the Eastern 'flavor of the infinite'. His poetry is constantly trying to hint to the reader the location of the road toward that transparent state of being the Easterners talk of.

At the same time, curious images slip into Ekelöf's poems from somewhere else. These other images have risen from the heathen Swedish ground, from old Finnish swamps and that part of the Northern unconscious still obsessed by shaman hallucinations, changing of bodies, journeys of souls during trance.

Ekelöf's poems are like a spider web strung between these two enormous trunks. (pp. 7-8)