The Collected Poems of W. S. Merwin

by W.S. Merwin, J.D. McClatchy (Editor)

Oracular and elegant, W. S. Merwin’s poetry reveals a heightened sense of what is essential to human the fragile framing of nature, the mysteries of memory and perception, the inescapable fact of our mortality. In a career spanning seven decades— from his brilliant emergence as the winner of the Yale Younger Poets’ Prize in 1952 to his recent term as U.S. Poet Laureate—he has fashioned a poetics unmistakably his own, marked by a stripped-down, unpunctuated style that foregrounds his responsiveness, spiritual insights, and facility with unadorned, elemental language. Now, with this two-volume edition, Merwin becomes only the second living poet to have his work collected by The Library of America. Here are such landmark books as his debut volume A Mask for Janus (1952), which shows the young poet engaged in a fruitful dialogue with Auden and Berryman; The Lice (1967), with its impassioned political poems about the Vietnam War and ecological catastrophe; The Vixen (1996), which offers vivid recollections of southwestern France; the epic verse novel The Folding Cliffs (2008), set in nineteenth-century Hawaii; and The Shadow of Sirius (2008), with its “late poems / that are made of words / that have come the whole way / they have been there.”

LIBRARY OF AMERICA  is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Genres: Poetry

1531 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2013

About the author

William Stanley Merwin was an American poet, credited with over fifty books of poetry, translation and prose.

William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island's rainforests.

Merwin received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 and 2009; the National Book Award for Poetry in 2005, and the Tanning Prize—one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets—as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2010, the Library of Congress named him the 17th United States Poet Laureate.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

RIP. Genius poet and translator.


Traces

A spring still not free of winter sends snow to hiss
at the windows in the afternoon and the swirl carries
white petals from the plum trees away into the blank
sky over the valley as the jays watch from the branches
then in the morning cold fog with the voices of crows
echoing and the known smell of dry oak in the fire
I have gone I have gone what is it all to me
but haunting and denial and relic and division
hoarding its own language and disclosing nothing
as winter says nothing to spring nor spring to winter
nor the shuttered houses to the wordless year
arriving in its own place without knowing any other
I always forgot that something escapes me here
I always forgot something that escapes me here
it knows me when I appear and does not even turn away
by now I can read in the infant leaves the whole tale
of summer and on each limb foretell how the fruit will ripen
but that is only the past which comes forgetting

[Mills College Library]

811.54 M576co 2013 v.1

[oli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marvellous. A warning in case you were thinking of reading this in a copse, as Merwin's work compelled me to do: as with all Library of America collections, the paper is extremely thin and fragile.

[noli ✧.*]

voy a loggear los poemas que leí en mi taller porque lo merezco (9/10)

[Richard Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great to read these chronologically, after piecemeal encounters over the years in The New Yorker.