Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Featured on NPR's Fresh Air and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.
Honored as one of the Best Books of the Year from Publishers Weekly.
A collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound
power of memory. --Pulitzer Prize Committee
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; he has made for himself that most
difficult of creations, an accomplished style. --Helen Vendler, The New
York Review of Books
"Merwin is one of the great poets of our age."--Los Angeles Times Book
Review
[The Shadow of Sirius is] the very best of all Merwin: I have been
reading William since 1952, and always with joy. --Harold Bloom
[Merwin's] best book in a decade--and one of the best outright... The
poems... feel fresh and awake with a simplicity that can only be called
wisdom. --Publishers Weekly, starred review
Merwin's gentle wisdom and attentiveness to the world are alive as ever.
These deeply reflective meditations move through light and darkness, old
love and turning seasons to probe the core of human existence. --Orion
[The Shadow of Sirius] shows the earthly possibilities of simple
completeness in a writer's mature work. More than an achievement in
poetry, this is an achievement in writing. --Harvard Review
The nuanced mysteries of light, darkness, presence, and memory are
central themes in W.S. Merwin's new book of poems. "I have only what I
remember," Merwin admits, and his memories are focused and profound--the
distinct qualities of autumn light, a conversation with a boyhood
teacher, well-cultivated loves, and "our long evenings and
astonishment." In "Photographer," Merwin presents the scene where
armloads of antique glass negatives are saved from a dumpcart by
"someone who understood." In "Empty Lot," Merwin evokes a child lying in
bed at night, listening to the muffled dynamite blasts of coal mining
near his home, and we can't help but ask: How shall we mine our lives?
somewhere the Perseids are falling
toward us already at a speed that would
burn us alive if we could believe it
but in the stillness after the rain ends
nothing is to be heard but the drops falling
W.S. Merwin, author of over fifty books, is America's foremost poet.
His last two books were honored with major literary awards: Migration
won the National Book Award, and Present Company received the Bobbitt
Prize from the Library of Congress.
