A Step in the Right Direction

Book excerpt: Poetry. Translated from the Danish by Barbara Haveland. A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION is a series of meditations on walking. Divided into four major songs, or cantos, each one explores the act of walking from a different point of view: As a social activity; as an act of love; as a condition for thought; and as an inspiration for art. In this new collection, Morten S ndergaard continues a line of thought he first developed in Bees Die Sleeping and continued in VINCI, LATER (which was published in English in 2005). "Morten S ndergaard carefully brushes the lint off our shoulders, then crouches behind the controls of his poems and does everything to dislodge us from our feet. As doomful and slapstick as Beckett, he gives voice to the ground we stomp all over, and the stuff aside from people that peoples our world."--Stuart Ross