Butterfly Valley: A Requiem

'Butterfly Valley' is a tour de force, exploring the major themes of life, love, death and art. The form is simple yet complex, a sequence of fifteen sonnets building to a final sonnet of extraordinary power composed of lines taken from the preceding fourteen sonnets in the sequence. Life, love, art, all are transient - like the butterfly - yet beautiful, even in their ephemerality. The translator Susanna Nied is a former instructor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University in California. Her translation of Inger Christensen's 'Alphabet' won the 1982 ASF/PEN Translation Prize.