Books in Print:
In Which We See Our Selves: American Ghazals. Mayapple Press, 2017. An unapologetically American take on this ancient Eastern form, with enormous debt to Agha Shahid Ali.
Heart. Wood., Word Press, 2012. This gathers the best of Eric Torgersen's poems since 1994.
The Man Who Loved Rilke, a novella from March Street Press, 2008. An American poet's struggle with the great German master. isbn 1-59661-086-7. 64 pp. $15 + $3 postage & handling. Send check to Eric Torgersen, 8475 Chippewa Trail, Mt. Pleasant MI 48858.
see cover and read a little
Inside Unity House: The John-Paul Story, also from March Street Press, is a verse novella set in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 1960’s and 70’s. Carl Jung and the Beatles. isbn 1-882983-43-2. 24 pp. $6 + $3 postage and handling. Send check to Eric Torgersen, 8475 Chippewa Trail, Mt. Pleasant MI 48858.
see cover and read a little
Dear Friend: Rainer Maria and Paula Modersohn-Becker, Northwestern University Press, is a study of the relationship between Rilke and the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, about whom Rilke wrote his great “Requiem for a Friend.” Includes new translations of the Requiem and other Rilke poems. 276 pp. isbn 0-8101-1567-0 cloth $29.95. 0-8101-1819-X paper $17.95.
"It was not until I read 'Requiem for a Friend' in Eric Torgersen's translation that I understood what a great and tragic poem it is: guilt-ridden, impassioned, intimate, a sublimated howl. --Galway Kinnell
"A brilliant and valuable study, written with grace and passion, Torgersen's work could scarcely be bettered, both for the delight of reading it provides and for the insights into the lives it exposes." --Choice
see cover and read a little Order online from Northwestern University Press
Good True Stories, Lynx House Press, 1994. 64 pp. isbn 0-89924-090-9. $9.95.
"These are wonderfully intelligent poems about the bewilderment that, with menacing cheerfulness, comes with insight. . . . Eric Torgersen loves informal incident and formal detail, Rilke and Elvis, and his poems, good and true as they are, are also funny, distinctive, and very moving." -- Charles Baxter
see cover and read a little
Ethiopia, an oldie but still in print from Hanging Loose Press, is a novella about a relationship between an American teacher and an Ethiopian woman. 52pp. isbn 0-914610-06-6. $5.
“I thought the writing in Ethiopia to be wonderfully harsh and deft, often brilliant.”—Jim Harrison
see cover and read a little Order by mail from Hanging Loose Press, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217, $5 + $4 postage & handling.
Out of Print: (try www.abebooks.com or www.amazon.com)
The Door to The Moon. March Street Press, 1993. A chapbook of very short poems.
See cover and read a little
At War with Friends, Ithaca House, 1972. Poems.
The Carpenter, Salt Mound Press, 1969. Poems.