Criticism

Benedikt, Michael. "Critic of the Month: IV." Poetry 113, No. 3 (December 1968): 188-215.

Brief discussion of Robert Bly's English translation of Ekelöf's poetry, entitled I Do Best Alone at Night.

Harvey, Steven. "The Changed Name of God." The Iowa Review 25, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 1995): 40-6.

Compares Ekelöf with poet John Logan.

Lesser, Rika. "Gunnar Ekelöf and Hjalmar Gullberg: 'But in Another Language … ". The American Poetry Review 10, No. 5 (September/October 1981): 42-7.

A positive assessment of Muriel Rukeyser and Leif Sjöberg's 1979 English translation of A Mölna Elegy.

Mattsson, Margareta. Review of Songs of Something Else, by Gunnar Ekelöf, translated by Leonard Nathan and James Larson. World Literature Today 57, No. 1 (Winter 1983): 122.

A generally favorable review of Songs of Something Else.

Merwin, W. S. "Into English." The New York Times Book Review (March 17, 1968): 6.

A largely negative review of Selected Poems of Gunnar Ekelöf, as translated by Muriel Rukeyser and Leif Sjöberg.

Printz-Påhlson, Goran. Introduction to Selected Poems, by Gunnar Ekelöf, translated by W. H. Auden and Leif Sjöberg, pp. 13-18. Pantheon Books, 1971.

Surveys the development of Ekelöf's poetry, and describes Ekelöf himself as "a guardian of the border regions of the mind."

Shideler, Ross. "A Functional Theory of Literature Applied to Poems by Paul Valéry and Gunnar Ekelöf." Psychocultural Review 2, No. 3 (Summer 1978): 181-201.

Includes a close reading of Ekelöf's "En prins var namn bör vara onärnnt" ("A Prince Whose Name Must Not Be Known") that examines how the poem acts upon the reader's "emotive and cognitive" perceptions.

Sjöberg, Leif. "Gunnar Ekelöf's 'Tag och skriv': A Reader's Commentary." Scandinavian Studies 35, No. 4 (November 1963): 307-24.

Provides a close reading of a poem from Ferry Song, and stresses the differences between Ekelöf and poet T. S. Eliot.

——. "Allusions in the Last Part of Gunnar Ekelöf's En Mölna-Elegi." The Germanic Review XL, No. 2 (March 1965): 132-49.

Offers "a preparatory study" of a part of Ekelöf's complex poem that had not been completed at the time this essay was published.

——. "Gunnar Ekelöf: Poet and Outsider." The American Scandinavian Review LIII, No. 2 (June 1965): 140-6.

An interview with Ekelöf at his home, a visit to which, Sjöberg observes, is treated almost as a pilgrimage by poets and readers alike.

——. "Note: Two Poems by Ekelöf." Scandinavica 5, No. 1 (May 1966): 126-30.

Compares two short poems by Ekelöf with the two paintings that inspired them.

——. "A Note on Poems by Ekelöf." Scandinavian Studies 39, No. 2 (May 1967): 147-52.

Discusses the inspiration from the visual arts upon which Ekelöf relied for many of his poems.

"Two Quotations in Ekelöf's 'Absentia Animi.'" The Germanic Review, XLIV (January 1969): 45-60.

Focuses on the imagery of a butterfly and on some lines inspired by Rimbaud, whom Ekelöf admired, in "Absentia Animi."

Stendahl, Brita. Review of Guide to the Underworld, by Gunnar Ekelöf, translated by Rika Lesser. World Literature Today 55, No. 3 (Summer 1981): 488-89.

Positive review of Guide to the Underworld.

Thygesen, Erik. Review of Skrifter, Vols. 1-7, by Gunnar Ekelöf, edited by Reidar Ekner. World Literature Today 68, No. 1 (Winter 1994): 149-50.

Largely positive review of Ekner's stated attempt to offer the reader "the whole Ekelöf in this Swedish-language collection of Ekelöf's poetry and prose.

Young, Vernon. "Nature and Vision: Or Dubious Antithesis." The Hudson Review XXV, No. 4 (Winter 1972-73): 659-74.

Young describes Ekelöf's later poems as Eastern in philosophy and "quite unlike any Western poems [he] can remember."

Additional coverage of Ekelöfs life and career is contained in the following sources published by The Gale Group: Contemporary Authors, Vols. 25-28 (rev. ed.), 123; Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 27; and Discovering Authors: Poets Module.