W. S. Merwin Book order

A collection centered in myth, A Mask for Janus is the 49th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets

Der Schatten des Sirius, etwas, das niemand gesehen hat, ist, wie Merwin in einem Interview sagte, reine Metapher, reine Imagination. Wir selbst sind dieser Schatten, hinter der sichtbaren Welt liegt das, was nicht sichtbar, nicht zu wissen ist. Das Unbekannte ist es, das unser Leben lenkt, und es ist die Aufgabe der Dichtung, sich diesem Unbekannten anzunähern, ohne es je zu erreichen, zu sagen, was unsagbar ist - Liebe, Kummer, Zorn auszudrücken - diese Gefühle, die unausdrückbar sind. William Stanley Merwin (der für seine Buchpublikationen die Form W.S. Merwin vorzieht) gilt als einer der bedeutendsten amerikanischen Dichter unserer Epoche. Als einziger amerikanischer Dichter erhielt er zweimal den Pulitzer-Preis für Lyrik - den ersten hatte er 1971 wegen des amerikanischen Vorgehens im Vietnamkrieg abgelehnt - eines von vielen Beispielen für sein Engagement in politischen und ökologischen Fragen. Einer breiten Leserschaft in und außerhalb der USA ist er durch die zahlreichen Gedichte bekannt geworden, die das Magazin The New Yorker vorabgedruckt hat. Im Jahr 2010 wurde Merwin zum Poeta Laureatus der Vereinigten Staaten gewählt. The Shadow of Sirius ist ein Alterswerk, nicht mehr vordergründig geprägt von Merwins politischem Engagement und seinen ökologischen Anliegen, obwohl diese noch in einzelnen Texten zur Sprache kommen. Der lyrische Sprecher ist vom realen Dichter nicht zu trennen, und so stehen im Mittelpunkt Reminiszenzen an Kindheit und Familie, zumal an den stets distanzierten Vater und die warmherzige Mutter, von der er das Gärtnern lernte, eine lebenslange Lieblingstätigkeit, aber auch Erinnerungen an seine Hunde und an Landschaften und Menschen, die er kannte, an Jahreszeiten und die Tiere und Pflanzen seiner Umgebung. Dennoch haben seine Themen universale Gültigkeit, gestaltet er das Persönliche zum Repräsentativen. Viele Texte sind poetologisch, legen Rechenschaft ab von seinem Leben als Wortkünstler.

W.S. Merwin is arguably the most influential American poet of the last half- century - an artist who has transfigured and reinvigorated the vision of poetry for our time. This new collection written in his late-80s finds him deeply immersed in reflection on the passage of time and the frailty and sustaining power of memory.

Latest collection by one of America's leading poets finds him, now in his mid-80s, reflecting on time and memory. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

W.S. Merwin was arguably the most influential American poet of the last half- century. While he was long viewed in the States as an essential voice in modern American literature, his poetry was unavailable in Britain for over 35 years until Bloodaxe published this edition of his Selected Poems in 2007.

“Metaphors, puns, surrealist visions, converted into sharp, disturbing little narratives . . . only a poet, and a good one, could have written it.” — The Atlantic MonthlyW.S. Merwin’s acclaimed short prose pieces — many of which first appeared in The New Yorker — blur the distinction between fiction, poetry, essay, and memoir. Reminiscent of Kafka, Borges, and Beckett, they evoke mythical patterns and unlikely adventures and raise questions about art, reality, and meaning. As the, itself fabled, Saturday Review once remarked, the prose pieces have “astonishing range and power.”The Book of Fables comprises all the short prose from two of Merwin's out-of-print collections, The Miner’s Pale Children and Houses and Travellers. The pieces run from a single sentence to a dozen pages and create a poetic landscape both sere and sensuous.

America today is a mobile society. Many of us travel abroad, and few of us live in the towns or cities where we were born. It wasn't always so. “Travel from America to Europe became a commonplace, an ordinary commodity, some time ago, but when I first went such departure was still surrounded with an atmosphere of adventure and improvisation, and my youth and inexperience and my all but complete lack of money heightened that vertiginous sensation,” writes W. S. Merwin. Twenty-one, married and graduated from Princeton, the poet embarked on his first visit to Europe in 1948 when life and traditions on the continent were still adjusting to the postwar landscape. Summer Doorways captures Merwin at a similarly pivotal time before he won the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1952 for his first book, A Mask for Janus—the moment was, as the author writes, “an entire age just before it was gone, like a summer.”

Growing up in a repressed Presbyterian household, W. S. Merwin reflects on his youth in small river towns of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The memoir intricately portrays a family lacking language and history, illustrating the formation of a writer's conscience. It serves as both a personal narrative and a cautionary tale about the middle class's desire to erase their origins. Through vivid and intimate family portraits, Merwin offers readers a profound exploration of identity and the impact of familial isolation.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and “one of the greatest poets of our age … the Thoreau of our era” (Edward Hirsch) comes a masterly work of poems, exhibiting the artistry and style he made his own.A strikingly beautiful book of poems from one of our finest poets. To his lyrics Merwin adds three long narrative "Lament for the Makers" is his tribute to fellow poets who are gone and who had his admiration, from Dylan Thomas to James Merrill; "Testimony" is a tour de force, an autobiographical poem in the manner of Francois Villon; "Suite in the Key of Forgetting" is a remarkable poem about memory and memories.

The author's famous work on his time living on the shores of Walden Pond and ruminating on nature, life, and human existence.