Review by Choice Review
Between 1952 and 1988, Merwin published 11 collections containing a total of 630 poems. For his Selected Poems he has chosen about 100. His first two volumes are represented by only five poems; a more recent volume of love poems, Finding the Islands (1982), is not represented at all. Some poems that have been anthologized and discussed are omitted (e.g., "When the War Is Over," "The Annunciation"). The poet says his choices were subjective. Nothing was revised. The poet's selection enables a reader to follow the development of his style and to contemplate the range of his concerns: myth, time and memory, the murder of animals, nuclear and ecological disaster, family. His rank as a major 20th-century poet seems secure. The Rain in the Trees contains 64 poems written since Opening the Hand (1983). These poems are written in the language of everyday talk--no metaphors, no conventional symbolism, no punctuation. They seem suspended in time, distilling a kind of awe at the wondrous strangeness of things. The rain is a gentle one, and the trees are mysteriously silent. The poems are evocative and elusive. They remind one of the later phase of many creative artists. W. C. Buchanan Grand Valley State College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
We are lucky that Merwin did not die young for, as this selection from three decades of his widely lauded work shows, he was at midcareer before he found a subject worthy of his eloquence. His early work, represented here by a few selections from the 1950s, is full of such self-consciously gorgeous lines as ``I sing to drown the silence of far flowers.'' It was in the 1960s that he began to stretch past mere beauty; this growth was occasioned by losses significant enough to make him learn ``how to spend the day and night / climbing out of myself.'' Paradoxically, pain made Merwin a more joyful poet: ``When the pain of the world finds words / they sound like joy.'' His recent work is delightfully youthful: ``the autumn light / that brings everything back . . . the light again of beginnings.'' MPM. 811'.54 [CIP] 87-31771
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
After years of translating foreign poetry, Merwin has gained an extraordinary facility with the more difficult, idiosyncratic language of his inner self. The result is a special voice unique in all of American poetry, as suggested by this generous selection Merwin makes from ten of his previous books, beginning with A Mask for Janus (Yale, 1952) and ending with Opening the Hand (Atheneum, 1982). All the favorites are here,including ``Lemuel's Blessing,'' ``Air,'' ``The River of Bees,'' and ``Fly.'' In ``The Coin,'' one of his best poems, Merwin re-creates an entire fair, depicting tents, animals, flowers, and three turtledoves with a coin in the grain at the bottom of their cage. As in the best of Selected Poems , ``all of it returns without a sound.'' A major poetry title of 1988. Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Library Journal Review
