Self-Portrait with Dogwood - Softcover

9781595348098: Self-Portrait with Dogwood
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In the course of researching dogwood trees, beloved poet and essayist Christopher Merrill realized that a number of formative moments in his life had some connection to the tree named according to one writer because its fruit was not fit for a dog. As he approached his sixtieth birthday, Merrill began to compose a self-portrait alongside this tree whose lifespan is comparable to a human’s and that, from an early age, he’s regarded as a talisman.

Dogwoods have never been far from Merrill’s view at significant moments throughout his life, helping to shape his understanding of place in the great chain of being; entwined in his experience is the conviction that our relationship to the natural world is central to our walk in the sun. The feeling of a connection to nature has become more acute as his life has taken him to distant corners of the earth, often to war zones where he has witnessed not only humankind’s propensity for violence and evil but also the enduring power of connections that can be forged across languages, borders, and politics. Dogwoods teach us persistence humility and wonder.

Self-Portrait with Dogwood is no ordinary memoir, but rather the work of a traveler who has crisscrossed the country and the globe in search of ways to make sense of his time here. Merrill provides new ways of thinking about personal history, the environment, politics, faith, and the power of the written word. In his descriptions of places far and near, many outside of the average American’s purview a besieged city in Bosnia, a hidden path in a Taiwanese park, Tolstoy’s country house in Russia, a castle in Slovakia, a blossoming dogwood at daybreak in Seattle the reader’s understanding of the world will flourish as well.

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About the Author:
Christopher Merrill has published four collections of poetry, including Boat, Brilliant Water, and Watch Fire; many edited volumes and translations; and four books of nonfiction, including Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, and The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, his journalism appears in many publications, and he has been the book critic for the daily radio news program The World. He directs the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Finalist, 2010 Best Translated Poetry Book Award, for Scale and Stairs: Selected Poems of Heeduk Ra, translated from the Korean with Won-Chung Kim.
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, French Ministry of Culture and Communications, 2006
The Kostas Kyriazis Foundation Honorary International Literary Prize, 2005
Translation Awards, Korean Literature Translation Institute, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2011
The Writers Association of Bosnia-Herzegovina Annual Literary Award, The Bosnian Stecak, 2001
Finalist, 1997 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, for The Four Questions of Melancholy: New and Selected Poems by Tomaz Šalamun (editor)
Translation Award, Slovenian Ministry of Culture, 1997
The Academy of American Poets Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award, 1993
Readers’ Choice Award in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, 1992
Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in Poetry, 1991
Editors’ Award in Poetry, Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry & Prose, 1990
Pushcart Prize XV in Poetry, 1990
John Ciardi Fellow in Poetry, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, 1989
Sherman Brown Neff Fellowship, University of Utah, 1986-1987
Review:
"A memoir for lovers of writing and reading." ― Kirkus Reviews

“His memoir, written as he was nearing his sixtieth year, traces the delicate, interactive web of creation that links humans and nature, illuminating how vital each small being, each plant, each person is to the whole. In travels across the globe, even to war zones where scenes of the depth of man’s depravity were seared into his soul, Merrill also found the wonder of humanity’s ability to love, to heal, and to connect; the dogwood serves both as a metaphor for this and, in its decline, as an “an augur of our fate” should we fail to honor these connections.”― Foreword Reviews

“An arboreal memoir, an autobiographical dendrology: Merrill, like the dogwood seeds and seedlings, roams the planet, appearing or pausing at unexpected moments in history. The migrant trees sink their roots in various foreign soils; the man, though wandering―even in zones of war―remains rooted in the humus of poetry.” ― Eliot Weinberger

“Christopher Merrill is a national treasure, both as a writer and a global warrior for literature and witness. In a fine career of making exquisite books, Self-Portrait with Dogwood might be his most moving. Beauty rises from every page. Going on my short list of favorite books―I will refer to it and teach it for the rest of my life, like I do with Bashō and Hanshan. A quiet classic.” ― Luis Alberto Urrea

“How wise of the U.S. State Department to send Christopher Merrill around the globe as a poet-ambassador. I can’t imagine anyone better equipped to represent us to a suffering and turbulent world. His attentive ear and eye, his keen mind, his compassionate heart, his courage and eloquence are all richly displayed in this engrossing book. The stories he tells here―about woods and waters, poetry and soccer, about literary heroes, an ailing daughter, and a dying friend―are suffused by Merrill’s devotion to mercy and beauty, and by his fascination with the ineffable power we call nature.” ― Scott Russell Sanders, author of Divine Animal

“Christopher Merrill speaks to the essential and too often buried part of us that intuits the relatedness of all things (human beings and nature, love and war, shame and desire) and investigates the way those intersections urge some of us toward metaphor, toward a life dedicated to the making of art. Self-Portrait with Dogwood makes a case for a new type of memoir in which the self―rather than being spotlighted―is but one slender thread in an intricate weave that reaches across species, centuries, and time zones. This is an elegant, intelligent, deeply compelling, and necessary book.” ― Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted

“How do we attach meaning to human existence? Merrill’s memoir turns to the dogwood tree as talisman, a presence from his childhood through a life richly textured with natural, literary, and cultural history. His artful reflections on friendship, family, poetry, transplanting trees, and global diplomacy show how ‘giving voice to nonhuman perspectives’ may indeed be essential to cultivating our humanity.” ― Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit

  • Winner of Independent Publisher Book Award - Silver for Memoir
  • Designated as Finalist for Foreword Indies Awards - Memoir
  • Winner of 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Awards - Memoir
  • Winner of 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award - First Runner Up Memoir
  • "About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

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