In the 1940s and 1950s Gunvor Hofmo was celebrated as one of the most original and promising of the Norwegian postwar poets. In a review of her fourth book, I en våkenatt (In a Night of Insomnia [or Vigil], 1954), in the Oslo newspaper Verdens Gang (17 November 1954) the poet Paal Brekke proclaimed her a spokeswoman for the postwar generation; in Hofmo's disintegrated images he recognized the disillusionments of his own time, the general experience of fear, alienation, and despair among young people in the first decades after World War II. Brekke asserted that Hofmo's debut collection, Jeg vil hjem til menneskene (I Want to Go Home to the People, 1946), was the first book in Norway that clearly belonged to the period after the war. In contrast to the appeal for unity, solidarity, and fighting spirit articulated in most poems written during the war, Hofmo's first book expressed...