Selected Poems
After years of translating foreign poetry, Merwin has gained an extraordinary facility with the more difficult, idiosyncratic language of his inner self. The result is a special voice unique in all of American poetry, as suggested by this generous selection Merwin makes from ten of his previous books, beginning with A Mask for Janus (Yale, 1952) and ending with Opening the Hand (Atheneum, 1982). All the favorites are here,including "Lemuel's Blessing," "Air," "The River of Bees," and "Fly." In "The Coin," one of his best poems, Merwin re-creates an entire fair, depicting tents, animals, flowers, and three turtledoves with a coin in the grain at the bottom of their cage. As in the best of Selected Poems , "all of it returns without a sound." A major poetry title of 1988. Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.