The First Four Books of Poems

by W.S. Merwin

Collects all the poems, unrevised and unedited, of the distinguished American poet's first four volumes, providing a comprehensive view of his early work and his growth as a poet

Genres: Poetry

261 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

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

[Edita]

We survived the selves that we remembered.

[David Anthony Sam]

There are a number of fine poems in this collection, and Merwin's use of language and his varied subjects are commendable. However, sometimes the language drifts to the needlessly archaic and verbose.

[Adrian Alvarez]

I guess I just wanted to start at the beginning. What I found is an understandably uneven collection of first efforts from a famously prolific poet who would go on to write some of our most cherished American poetry.

The first book, A Mask for Janus, is full of overly clever pieces - some of which made me roll my eyes. It certainly establishes Merwin as a poet to watch but you can tell he's just showing off in some places.

The Dancing Bears, the sophomore effort, is true to its place in an artist's life. Merwin dispenses with the cleverness but can't quite harness his voice so the poems are opaque in places, oppressive in others. I think I decided to hate the second book somewhere in the middle of East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

Finally, in Green with Beasts we catch a glimpse of Merwin's voice. The Annunciation stopped me cold:

And I moved away because you must live
Forward, which is away from whatever
It was that you had, though you think when you have it
That it will stay with you forever. Like that word
I thought I had known and held surely and that it
Was with me always. In the evening
Between the shadows the light lifts and slides
Out and out, and the cold that was under the air
Is darkness you remember, and how it was
There all the time and you had forgotten.
It carries its own fragrance. And there is this man
Will take me as a woman, and he is a good man,
And I will learn what I am, and the new names. Only
If I could remember, if I could only remember
The way that word was, and the sound of it.

There he is. There's that cadence we look forward to with a WS Merwin poem. The one that travels us.

By the time I got to The Drunk in the Furnace I didn't need much more to go on. It may not be his best work but he has picked up momentum and confidence in his voice so when the poems work they are very good and when they don't they're forgivable.

What I found remarkable about the last book in this collection was how Merwin seems to revisit the aspects he experimented with in the first two books but integrate them into what he learned along the way. So he pulls off clever forms like he uses in Some Winter Sparrows and Catullus XI but they are grounded and feel like expressions rather than gimmicks (or showcases).

All in all I enjoyed this volume but I don't think it's essential reading unless you have a weird hang up about tracking certain artists from their beginnings like I do.

[mwpm]

The First Four Books of Poems includes the following books: A Mask For Janus , The Dancing Bears , Green With Beasts , and The Drunk In The Furnace ...

From A Mask For Janus ...

I am the shape in sleep
While the seasonal beasts
With petulant rough step
Forsake my random coasts.

I am the face recedes
Though the pool be constant
Whose double kingdom feeds
The sole vein's discontent.

I have seen desire, such
As a violent hand,
Murder my sleep - as much
Is suffered of the wind.

- Song with the Eyes Closed, pg. 50

From The Dancing Bears ...

I do not understand the world, Father.
By the millpond at the end of the garden
There is a man who slouches listening
To the wheel revolving in the stream, only
There is no wheel there to revolve.

He sits in the end of March, but he sits also
In the end of the garden; his hands are in
His pockets. It is not expectation
On which he is intent, nor yesterday
To which he listens. It is a wheel turning.

When I speak, Father, it is the world
That I must mention. He does not move
His feet nor so much as raise his head
For fear he should disturb the sound he hears
Like a pain without a cry, where he listens.

I do not think I am fond, Father,
Of the way in which always before he listens
He prepares himself by listening. It is
Unequal, Father, like the reason
For which the wheel turns, though there is no wheel.

I speak of him, Father, because he is
There with his hands in his pockets, in the end
Of the garden listening to the turning
Wheel that is not there, but it is the world,
Father, that I do not understand.

- On the Subject of Poetry, pg. 109

From Green With Beasts ...

So many times I have felt them come, Lord,
The arrows (a coward dies often), so many times,
And worse, oh worse often than this. Neither breeze nor bird
Stirring the hazed peace through which the day climbs.

And slower even than arrows, the few sounds that come
Falling, as across water, from where farther off than the hills
The archers move in a different world in the same
Kingdom. Oh, can the noise of angels,

The beat and whirring between Thy kingdoms
Be even by such cropped feathers raised? No though
With the wings of the morning may I fly from Thee; for it is

Thy kingdom where (and the wind so still now)
I stand in pain; and, entered with pain as always,
Thy kingdom that on these erring shafts comes.

- Saint Sebastian, pg. 176

From The Drunk In The Furnace ...

Always the setting forth was the same,
Same sea, same dangers waiting for him
As though he had got nowhere but older.
Behind him on the receding shore
The identical reproaches, and somewhere
Out before him, the unraveling patience
He was wedded to. There were the islands
Each with its woman and twining welcome
To be navigated, and once to call "home."
The knowledge of all that he betrayed
Grew till it was the same whether he stayed
Or went. Therefore he went. And what wonder
If sometimes he could not remember
Which was the one who wished on his departure
Perils that he could never sail through,
And which, improbable, remote, and true,
Was the one he kept sailing home to?

- Odysseus, pg. 221

[Griflet]

I came to appreciate Merwin in the slow months it took me to read this. I do understand the criticism but I gradually grew to understand his work and sensibilities and became a more generous reader and open to its value beyond my likings or dislikings.

[Myhte]

this way the dust, that way the dust.

Whatever I have to do has not yet begun

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning
so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible

We are the echo of the future

The star
in my hand
is falling.

This must be what I wanted to be doing,
Walking at night between the two deserts,
Singing.

In the evening
all the hours that weren't used
are emptied out
and the beggars are waiting to gather them up
to open them
to find the sun in each one
and teach it its beggar's name
and sing to it It is well
through the night

but each of us
has his own kingdom of pains
and has not yet found them all
and is sailing in search of them day and night
infallible undisputed unresting.

Tonight once more
I find a single prayer and it is not for men

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out

every year without knowing it I have passed the day
when the last fires will wave to me
and the silence will set out
tireless traveller
like the beam of a lightless star

[Mills College Library]

811.54 M576fi 2000