The Moon Before Morning - Hardcover

Merwin, W. S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556594534 ISBN 13: 9781556594533

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press, 2014

Synopsis

Merwin’s masterfully refined, meditative poems stem from his dwelling mindfully in one beloved place and handling words as though they are seeds, flowers, stones, and water Merwin has attained a transcendent and transformative elevation of beaming perception, exquisite balance, and clarifying beauty.” Booklist, starred review of The Moon before Morning

"In his personal anonymity, his strict individuated manner, his defense of the earth, and his heartache at time's passing, Merwin has become instantly recognizable on the page." Helen Vendler, The New York Review of Books

"W.S. Merwin's legacy is unquestionably secure: his best and most fierce poems are moody, visionary compositions that dive into the unconscious and the seeds of existence with an inwardness and scrutiny unique in American poetry." Poetry

"Merwin [is] fresh and awake with a simplicity that can only be called wisdom." Publishers Weekly, starred review

An elaboration and response to his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Shadow of Sirius, W.S. Merwin examines everything from minute flowers to oceanic destruction, and weaves our complex relationship with the natural world with his own youth, memory, and intense engagement with the passing of days. With considered reverence, subtle might, and generous poetic imagination, Merwin presents a masterful and gorgeous collection.

From "Wild Oats":

All the beads have gone
from the old string
and the string does not miss them

I needed my mistakes
in their own order
to get me here

In my youth I believed in somewhere else
I put faith in travel
now I am becoming my own tree

W.S. Merwin is one of the country's best-selling poets. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States, and his three most recent poetry collections each received a major award, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bobbitt Award from the Library of Congress. He lives in Hawaii.

About this title

Review:

'These poems are lyrical, majestic, sceptical and tenderly gorgeous meditations on time and the nature of perception. They are also technically thought-provoking. Since 1970 Merwin has abandoned punctuation and the resulting texts are thrilling processes in which syntax drifts in and out of focus, never a word out of place, and technique is made to carry metaphysical and psychological weight. Merwin intends the poem - because it must reflect human consciousness - to re-present a unified field of experience, especially of the temporal' - Martyn Crucefix, Poetry London. 'Merwin points his oracular, unpunctuated poems toward his own past, admitting, "I have only what I remember", and offering what may be his most personal, generous and empathic collection. Somehow, he manages to dissolve the boundaries between one time and another, seeming to look forward to the past or remember what has yet to happen - Gorgeous poems about enduring love melt time as well, looking toward a moment when we will be no older than we ever were' - Publishers Weekly. 'A fastidious, elegant writer, he is a calligrapher of consciousness, a fine penman aware that he is writing not on parchment but in water - Merwin is the unmistakable heir of the Emerson and Whitman who so ecstatically hymned flux' - M. Wynn Thomas, Guardian. 'He has attained - more and more with every collection - a wonderfully streamlined diction that unerringly separates and recombines like quicksilver scattered upon a shifting plane, but remains as faithful to the warms and cools of the human heart as that same mercury in the pan-pipe of a thermometer' - James Merrill.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Merwin’s masterfully refined, meditative poems stem from his dwelling mindfully in one beloved place and handling words as though they are seeds, flowers, stones, and water. A former poet laureate and National Book Award winner, Merwin received his second Pulitzer Prize for his previous collection, The Shadow of Sirius (2008), and here extends his practice of closely observing nature, time, and human paradoxes. For four decades Merwin has been restoring land in Hawaii, the setting for the opening cycle of rinsed-clean lyrics, in which palm trees, clouds, each “the only one of its kind,” and his garden accentuate the perfection of nature—“no question and no doubt”—in contrast to the confusion and yearning of humankind. As he watches crows flying across a clear sky, he thinks, “Nothing is missing.” Yet he also writes of the deprivations of his gritty New Jersey childhood and his long wandering years. As Merwin contrasts reverence for the living world with heedless environmental destruction, anger surfaces. But gratitude prevails, and Merwin offers thanks for many gifts, including “words / that come out of silence and take me by surprise / and have carried me through the clear day.” Merwin has attained a transcendent and transformative elevation of beaming perception, exquisite balance, and clarifying beauty. --Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1556594534
• ISBN 13: 9781556594533
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120