This major collection, by a major American poet who has been awarded the Marshall, Bollingen, Pulitzer, and other important prizes for mastery of h...
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reviews
Nov 29, 2008
Kimberly
rated it: 
Something sad about this book is that it is almost an entire book about a certain place (I suppose somewhere in France) where Mr. Merwin lived for probably no more than a year in his 20s, and the book was out in 1996, which was in his 60s. The place is so acutely remembered, but so obviously lost for good. Is he doing this from memory? I don't like his decision to abandon punctuation, it makes reading laborious and I can never tell if something is obtuse because he intends it to be, or if I just
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Feb 07, 2009
Kent
rated it:
It feels as though Merwin is always on the verge of truly welding together deep image, pastoral, and indeterminate sentence structure. He is slippery in places with his grammar. But the commitment just isn't complete. The fable voice is too strong in him, and where I would like to see it shifted into a new sense, or a hybrid incarnation matching his lack of punctuation. It just doesn't happen.
Jun 30, 2010
Randy
rated it:
This is tremendous when it deals with conjunctions between WSM's own history/memory in his 70s and the landscape around him. Don't like it quite so much when he's exploring local (i.e., South of France) historical figures. Nonetheless, Cauthen's Law may be wrong, and American poets perhaps should, occasionally, be allowed to go to France. Possibly even Spain and Italy.
Aug 04, 2009
Haunting meditation on place, time, history & memory. Rooted in observations of the French countryside, Merwin's collection achieves a rare fluidity and power..
Aug 10, 2009
Dman
rated it: 
Beautiful writing, so full of loss, history, aging, place, etc, etc.
Remains one of my favorite books.
Remains one of my favorite books.
Dec 16, 2009
D
rated it: 
I picked this up after reading Merwin in some anthology. I couldn't get into it and still haven't finished the thing. Sorry, Merwin.
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