"Eg vil synleggjere verden" (I want to make the world visible), Paal-Helge Haugen commented in a 1979 interview. If one were to seek a uniting characteristic for his various works, it might be this desire. From his first book in 1965, one of his major themes has been the examination of the sensory world in an attempt to grasp a reality that slides in and out of focus. His work is concerned with light and dark visual contrasts and with seeing as the preferred mode of perception. While his poems are closely connected to aesthetic, philosophical, and religious traditions, the meanings of these traditions are continually tested in poetry that is both contemporarily and classically oriented.

Haugen's preferred form is poetry, but in Poesi: dikt i samling 1965-1995 (Poetry: Collected Poems 1965-1995, 1995) he cautions that "Poesien er ikkje 'rein.' Den er heller ikkje 'personleg.' Den er eit maskespel...