Library of America #241

Oracular and elegant, W. S. Merwin's poetry reveals a heightened sense of what is essential to human consciousness: the fragile framing of nature, the mysteries of memory and perception, the inescapable fact of our mortality. In a career spanning seven decades- from his brilliant emergence as the winner of the Yale Younger Poets' Prize in 1952 to his recent term as U.S. Poet Laureate-he has fashioned a poetics unmistakably his own, marked by a stripped-down, unpunctuated style that foregrounds his responsiveness, spiritual insights, and facility with unadorned, elemental language

Vixen

(1996) --

Folding cliffs : a narrative

(1998) --

River sound

(1999) --

Pupil

(2001) --

Present company

(2005) --

Shadow of Sirius

(2008) --

New and uncollected poems 1993-2011 -- Chronology -- Note on the texts -- Notes -- Index of poem titles and first lines