Sidetracks Swedish with a restraint that dignifies

with a restraint that dignifies both grief and rage

The voices are wonderfully varied and idiomatic - they include a poacher

It centres on themes that recur frequently in Kareem's poetry - self-portraiture

Elke schreef van elke letter draagt in zich de sporen van een taal die tot het uiter­ste heeft moeten torsen

Sidetracks Swedish with a restraint that dignifiesBei Dao Sidetracks, Bei Daos first new collection in almost fifteen years, is also the poets first long poem and his magnum opusthe artistic culmination of a lifetime devoted to the renewal and reinvention of language. As a poet, I am always lost, Bei Dao once said. Opening with a prologue of heavenly questions and followed by thirty four cantos, Sidetracks travels forward and backward along the divergent paths of the poets wandering lifefrom his time