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Books : Literature & Fiction : Authors, A-Z : ( M ) : Merwin, W.S.
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First published in 1924, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada remains among Pablo Neruda’s most popular work. Daringly metaphorical and sensuous, this collection juxtaposes youthful passion with the desolation of grief. Drawn from the poet’s most intimate and personal associations, the poems combine eroticism and the natural world with the influence of expressionism and the genius of a master poet. This edition features the newly corrected original Spanish text, with masterly English translations by award-winning poet W. S. Merwin on facing pages.
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Osip Mandelstam is a central figure not only in modern Russian but in world poetry, the author of some of the most haunting and memorable poems of the twentieth century. A contemporary of Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetayeva, and Boris Pasternak, a touchstone for later masters such as Paul Celan and Robert Lowell, Mandelstam was a crucial instigator of the "revolution of the word" that took place in St. Petersburg, only to be crushed by the Bolshevik Revolution. Mandelstam's last poems, written in the interval between his exile to the provinces by Stalin and his death in the Gulag, are an extraordinary testament to the endurance of art in the presence of terror.
This book represents a collaboration between the scholar Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin, one of contemporary America's finest poets and translators. It also includes Mandelstam's "Conversation on Dante," an uncategorizable work of genius containing the poet's deepest reflections on the nature of the poetic process.
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Named one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times.
Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry
The poems in Migration speak a life-long belief in the power of words to awaken our drowsy souls and see the world with compassionate interconnection.”National Book Award judges’ statement
The publication of W. S. Merwin’s selected and new poems is one of those landmark events in the literary world.”Los Angeles Times
W. S. Merwin is the most influential American poet of the last half-centuryan artist who has transfigured and reinvigorated the vision of poetry for our time. Migration: New and Selected Poems is that case. This 540-page distillationselected by Merwin from fifteen diverse volumesis a gathering of the best poems from a profound body of work, accented by a selection of distinctive new poems.
As an undergraduate at Princeton University, Merwin was advised by John Berryman to get down on your knees and pray to the muse every day.” Migration represents the bounty of those prayers. Over the last fifty years, Merwin’s muse has led him beyond the formal verse of his early years to revolutionary open forms that engage a vast array of influences and possibilities. As Adrienne Rich wrote of Merwin’s work: I would be shamelessly jealous of this poetry, if I didn’t take so much from it into my own life.”
W. S. Merwin is the author of over fifty books of poetry, prose, and translation. He lives in Hawaii, where he raises endangered palm trees.
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"This writing has to do with some things I saw, felt, and was part of": with quiet modesty, David Jones begins a work that is among the most powerful imaginative efforts to grapple with the carnage of the First World War, a book celebrated by W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot as one of the masterpieces of modern literature. Fusing poetry and prose, gutter talk and high music, wartime terror and ancient myth, Jones, who served as an infantryman on the Western Front, presents a picture at once panoramic and intimate of a world of interminable waiting and unforeseen death. And yet throughout he remains alert to the flashes of humanity that light up the wasteland of war.
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Half Roundel
I make no prayer
For the spoilt season,
The weed of Eden.
I make no prayer.
Save us the green
In the weed of time.Now is November;
In night uneasy
Nothing I say.
I make no prayer.
Save us from the water
That washes us away.What do I ponder?
All smiled disguise,
Lights in cold places,
I make no prayer.
Save us from air
That wears us loosely.The leaf of summer
To cold has come
In little time.
I make no prayer.
From earth deliver
And the dark therein.Now is no whisper
Through all the living.
I speak to nothing.
I make no prayer.
Save us from fire
Consuming up and down.Evening with Lee Shore and Cliffs
Sea-shimmer, faint haze, and far out a bird
Dipping for flies or fish. Then, when over
That wide silk suddenly the shadow
Spread skating, who turned with a shiver
High in the rocks? And knew, then only, the waves'
Layering patience: how they would follow after,
After, dogged as sleep, to his inland
Dreams, oh beyond the one lamb that cried
In the olives, past the pines' derision. And heard
Behind him not the sea's gaiety but its laughter.The Fishermen
When you think how big their feet are in black rubber
And it slippery underfoot always, it is clever
H
Zen Buddhism distinguishes itself by brilliant flashes of insight and its terseness of expression. The haiku verse form is a superb means of studying Zen modes of thought and expression, for its seventeen syllables impose a rigorous limitation that confines the poet to vital experience. Here haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644-94) the greatest Japanese haiku poet are translated by Robert Aitken, with commentary that provides a new and deeper understanding of Basho’s work than ever before. In presenting themes from the haiku and from Zen literature that open the doors both to the poems and to Zen itself, Aitken has produced the first book about the relationship between Zen and haiku. His readers are certain to find it invaluable for the remarkable revelations it offers.
From a major American poet--a thrilling story, in verse, of nineteenth-century Hawaii. The story of an attempt by the government to seize and constrain possible victims of leprosy and the determination of one small family not to be taken. A tale of the perils and glories of their flight into the wilds of the island of Kauai, pursued by a gunboat full of soldiers.
A brilliant capturing--inspired by the poet's respect for the people of these islands--of their life, their history, the gods and goddesses of their mythic past. A somber revelation of the wrecking of their culture through the exploitative incursions of Europeans and Americans. An epic narrative that enthralls with the grandeur of its language and of its vision.
A contemporary prose rendering of the great medieval French epic, The Song of Roland is as canonical and significant as the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf. It extols the chivalric ideals in the France of Charlemagne through the exploits of Charlemagne's nephew, the warrior Roland, who fights bravely to his death in a legendary battle. Against the bloody backdrop of the struggle between Christianity and Islam, The Song of Roland remains a vivid portrayal of medieval life, knightly adventure, and feudal politics. The first great literary works of a culture are its epic chronicles, those that create simple hero-figures about whom the imagination of a nation can crystallize, observed V. S. Pritchett.
The Song of Roland is animated by the crusading spirit and fortified by national and religious propaganda. This edition features W. S. Merwin's glowing, lyrical translation.
“One of America’s greatest living poets.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Merwin keeps his language simple but his perceptions complex. Classical in their lines of inquiry and restraint yet vital in their attunement to the here and now, these personal odes and musings on daily existence and the cycles of life are, by turns, bemused and exalted . . . each poem infuses the collection with buoyancy and light.”—Booklist
Now in paperback, W.S. Merwin’s latest masterwork—which reviewers have described as “meditative,” “playful,” and “lithely beautiful”—guides readers to universal themes through worldly specifics. Akin to Pablo Neruda’s Elemental Odes, every poem in Present Company directly addresses the people and things of daily life, as in “To the Thief at the Airport” or “To Lingering Regrets.”
“To This May”
They know so much more now about
the heart we are told but the world
still seems to come one at a time
one day one year one season and here
it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time
its light pretending not to move
always beginning as it goes
At the pinnacle of a grand and prolific career, W. S. Merwin has given us a shimmering new verse translation of the central section of Dante's Divine Comedy -- the Purgatorio.
Led by Virgil, inspired by his love for Beatrice, Dante makes the arduous journey up the Mountain of Purgatory, where souls are cleansed to prepare them for the ultimate ascent to heaven. Presented with the original Italian text, and with Merwin's notes and commentary, this luminous new interpretation of Dante's great poem of sin, repentance, and salvation is a profoundly moving work of art and the definitive translation for our time.
From the Hardcover edition.
A literary event -- a new volume of poems by one of the masters of modern poetry -- The Rain in the Trees is W. S. Merwin's first book since the publication five years ago of his Opening the Hand.
Almost no other poet of our time has been able to voice in so subtle a fashion such a profound series of comments on the passing of history over the contemporary scene. To do this, he seems to have reinvented the poem -- so that the experience of reading Merwin is unlike the reading of any other poetry. In such famous books as The Lice, The Moving Target and (most recently) Opening the Hand, he has produced a body of work of great profundity and power made from the simplest and most beautiful poetic speech.
The poems in this new book are concerned with intimacy and wholeness, and are made of the relations with people, with places, past and present, and with history and how the world endures it.
Merwin can now rightfully be called a master, and this book shows in every way why this is the case.
A splendid new translation of the classic Arthurian tale of enchantment, adventure, and romance, presented alongside the original Middle English text.
It is the height of Christmas and New Year’s revelry when an enormous knight with brilliant green clothes and skin descends upon King Arthur’s court. He presents a sinister challenge: he will endure a blow of the axe to his neck without offering any resistance, but whoever gives the blow must promise to take the same in exactly a year and a day’s time. The young Sir Gawain quickly rises to the challenge, and the poem tells of the adventures he finds—an almost irresistible seduction, shockingly brutal hunts, and terrifyingly powerful villains—as he endeavors to fulfill his promise.
Capturing the pace, impact, and richly alliterative language of the original text, W. S. Merwin has imparted a new immediacy to a spellbinding narrative, written centuries ago by a poet whose name is now unknown, lost to time. Of the Green Knight, Merwin notes in his foreword: “We seem to recognize him—his splendor, the awe that surrounds him, his menace and his grace—without being able to place him . . . We will never know who the Green Knight is except in our own response to him.”
Pulitzer-prize winning poet W.S. Merwin traces the origins of the troubadours in 12th century Provance as he relates his own experience as a frequent visitor to southern France in this striking memoir, for the National Geographic Directories series. W.S.Mervin, one of the century's great American poets, turns his lyrical eye to the legacy of the Troubadours of southern France. Merwin expertly tells the story of these medieval poets, artists whose songs have survived for centuries and have outlived the culture and even the language in which they were written. For Merwin, it is very personal exploration, as he shares with the reader his love of the French countryside and of the old fermhouse that became his home for decades. The rural society he sees as direct progeny of the almost mythical Troubadour culture serves as the story's romantic background.
A volume bringing back into print three volumes by the most celebrated American poet currently writing.
Throughout WWII, French poet Jean Follain wrote poems that revisit the provinces of personal and cultural history. His quietly phrased, brief devotions are -described as "miniatures," yet are monumental, capturing the pressure of history upon daily moments. By reducing the world to its small objects, every detail, every image becomes imbued with meaning.
This bilingual volume, celebrating the centennial of Jean Follain’s birth, is translated by W.S. Merwin, who writes in his introduction: "Follain’s concern is finally with the mystery of the present—the mystery which gives the recalled concrete details their form, at once luminous and removed, when they are seen at last in their places, as they seem to be in the best of his poems."
Antonio Porchia (1886–1968) wrote one book, a slender collection of poetic aphorisms that became a classic in the Spanish-speaking world. With affinities to Taoist and Buddhist epigrams, Voices bears witness to the awe of human existence. Revised and updated with a new introduction by translator W.S. Merwin, this bilingual volume brings back into print one of Latin America’s great literary treasures.
He who tells the truth says almost nothing.
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I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
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Only a few arrive at nothing, because the way is long.
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Out of a hundred years a few minutes were made that stayed with me, not a hundred years.
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When I come upon some idea that is not of this world, I feel as though this world had grown wider.
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This world understands nothing but words, and you have come into it with almost none.
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We become aware of the void as we fill it.Antonio Porchia (1886–1968) was born in Italy. After his father died, he emigrated to Argentina with his mother and seven siblings, and as the eldest child, started working at the age of 14. He was self-taught, and his only book, Voices, caught the attention of a noted French critic who assumed him to be a scholar of Kafka and Buddhism, rather than the humble man who loved to tend his garden. Today, Porchia’s aphorisms are published in more than a dozen Spanish-language editions as well as in German, French and Italian.
W.S. Merwin’s awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the Tanning Prize, the Bollingen Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. He is the author of dozens of books of poetry and translations. He lives in Hawaii.
Gathered in this volume are translations and versions of poems and aphorisms from Asian languages as varied as Urdu, Chinese, Sanskrit, Japanese, Persian, and Vietnamese. Included are poems by some of the world's greatest writers, deeply influential poets such as Rumi, Tu Fu, Li Po, and Muso Soseki, beautifully brought forward by one of the century's most celebrated poets.
“Metaphors, puns, surrealist visions, converted into sharp, disturbing little narratives . . . only a poet, and a good one, could have written it.”—The Atlantic Monthly
W.S. Merwin’s acclaimed short prose—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 Saturday Review remarked, they have “astonishing range and power.”
The Book of Fables is an affordable paperback of all the short prose from two 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 severe and sensuous.
From “A Garden”:
You are a garden into which a bomb once fell and did not explode, during a war that happened before you can remember. It came down at night. It screamed, but there were so many screams. It was heard, but it was forgotten. It buried itself. It was searched for but it was given up. So much else had been buried alive . . .
Poet and translator W.S. Merwin has long been committed to artistic, political, and environmental causes in both word and deed. He has received nearly every major literary accolade, including the 2005 National Book Award in Poetry for Migration. Merwin lives in Hawaii, where he cultivates endangered palms.