Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry. |
How to write specific forms:
Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka. Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát. Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle. |
Poets:
Adam Zagajewski.
Bashō.
Billy Collins.
Billy Collins exercise.
Carl Dennis. Catie Rosemurgy. Charles Atkinson. Corey Marks. Edda (Snorri's). Franz Wright. Gary Young. The Gawain Poet. J. Zimmerman. J. Zimmerman (haiku). J. Zimmerman (tanka). J.D. McClatchy. Jack Gilbert. Jane Hirshfield. Jorie Graham. Karen Braucher. Kay Ryan. Laureate Poets: Britain; USA. Len Anderson. Li-Young Lee. Linda Pastan. Nordic Skalds. Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A). Richard Hugo. Robert Bly. Sara Teasdale. Shiki (haiku). Snorri's Edda. Stephen Dunn. Ted Kooser. W.S. Merwin. |
Books by W.S. Merwin
by J. Zimmerman.
Poetry.
Prose.
Translation.
Anthology.
Present Company (2005) by W.S. Merwin.
Publisher Copper Canyon Press.
Migration (2005) by W.S. Merwin.
Publisher Copper Canyon Press.
The Pupil (2001)
by W.S. Merwin.
The dark cover picture is the pupil (contractible opening) of an eye. Superimposed on the center of this is small circular photo supplied by the author and presumably of himself as a child. |
When one can hear Merwin read these poems, one has the double pleasure of hearing his voice and of hearing the cadences that he imposes on his unpunctuated poems. As with many of his books, I must restart several of the poems the first time I read them. Nonetheless ... worth taking time with these poems that presage his leave-taking of the world, first by forgetting and second by not being here.
Among my favorites are "Sonnet" (p.5):
Where it begins will remain a question for the time being at least ... ... come back I say to it over the waters |
and the magical "Marfa Lights" (pp.11-13):
... there is no explaining the dark it is only the light that we keep feeling a need to account for |
Other favorites are: "Aliens" (p.25), "Unspoken Greeting" (p.28), "Unknown Bird" (pp.36-37), "First of June" (p.50), "The Fence" (p.73), "Heights" (p.90), "Aliens" (p.25), "Aliens" (p.25), "Aliens" (p.25), "Aliens" (p.25),
Some of these poems were previously published in:
The River Sound (1999) by W.S. Merwin.
The Folding Cliffs (1998) by W.S. Merwin.
Travels (1992) by W.S. Merwin. |
Travels offers 45 poems in 137 pages (thus averaging the rather large 3 pages per poem). The poems are mostly persona poems. The notes identify six historical figures, including "David Douglas, 1799-1834, Scottish naturalist for whom the Douglas Fir is named, fell into a bull trap on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and was killed by a trapped bull."
One of my favorite poems is "Writing Lives" (p.9-10):
Out of a life it is done and without ever knowing how things will turn out or what a life is for that matter ... one way with the words is to tell the lives of others using the distance as a lens and another way is when there is no distance so that water is looking at water . . . there is still that light in the water before sunrise the untold day |
Curiously part of this chimes with something in "After the Spring" (p.137):
faces of water turning into themselves |
Other poems have phrases that are recognizably thumbprints of Merwin, and many of of them relate to time, including: "no longer", "come the day", "for by then it was already".
I prefer to hear Merwin read than to read his unpunctuated poems. On the whole Merwin's style of omitting all punctuation works better for his half-page poems than his very long pieces.
The Peacock's Egg: Love Poems form Ancient India (1981) by W.S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson. |
Helpful 35-page Introduction by the scholar and Sanskrit expert J. Moussaieff Masson.
The First Four Books (2000).
Flower & Hand: Poems, 1977-1983 (1997).
The Vixen (1996).
The Second Four Books (1993). [The Second Four Books of Poems: The Moving Target / The Lice / The Carrier of Ladders / Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment.]
Selected Poems (1988).
The Rain in the Trees (1988).
The Opening Hand (1983).
Finding the Islands (1982).
The Compass Flower (1977).
Writing to an Unfinished Accompaniment (1973).
Carrier of Ladders (1970). Won Pulitzer Prize.
The Lice (1967).
The Moving Target (1963).
The Drunk in the Furnace (1960).
Green with Beasts (1956).
The Dancing Bears (1954).
A Mask for Janus (1952).
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
translated by W.S. Merwin.
See: The Gawain Poet and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. |
Purgatorio by Dante, translated by W.S. Merwin. |
Related pages:
Books of Poetry Form. Alphabetic list of poetry forms and related topics. How to Write Poetry. |
Copyright
© 2006-2017 by J. Zimmerman.
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