Product Description

Winner of the 2009 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.

"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

"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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129974 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 120 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his best book in a decade—and one of the best outright—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, as in a recollection of traveling to Europe by boat and seeing a warship I recognized/ from a model of it I had made/ when I was a child/ and beyond it/ there was a road down the cliff/ that I would descend some years later/ and recognize it/ there we were all together/ one time. The poems show the marks of having weathered ...the complete course/ of life, but also feel fresh and awake with a simplicity that can only be called wisdom: the morning is too/ beautiful to be anything else. Gorgeous poems about enduring love melt time as well, looking toward a moment when we will be no older than we ever were. These are among Merwin's best poems, because, as he says, it is the late poems/ that are made of words/ that have come the whole way/ they have been there. (Sept.)
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From Booklist
With no punctuation and a solitary launching capital letter, Merwin’s elegant poems are built to the measure of breath and sweep the page like palm fronds. Yet each word is old, lustrous, and solid. Only a poet as seasoned as Merwin can wrest so much meaning from dark, moon, wake, river, and song. The questions he poses are as old as night, and the answers are forever elusive. The contrast between airiness and earthiness is intrinsic to master poet Merwin’s newest poems, lithe works steely in their testing of the mesh of memory and sensuousness; the coil of time, “our continuing fiction”; and the ripple of shadows attendant upon the brightest star, the most radiant life. Childhood reminiscences summon the dead and recall the now obsolete; the underworld masquerades as a coal mine or a shadow without form or “the darkness that is the mind of day.” And Merwin contemplates the earth’s verdant singularity in the “vault of darkness,” our entreaties “straying far out past the orbits and webs.” --Donna Seaman

Review
'In his best book in a decade - and one of the best outright - 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 - The poems show the marks of having weathered the complete course / of lifeA", but also feel fresh and awake with a simplicity that can only be called wisdom: the morning is too / beautiful to be anything elseA". 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. 'In The Shadow of Sirius, Merwin has given to 21st-century poetry what Matisse gave to 20th-century painting with his late-in-life paper cutouts: the irreducible essence of his art. It is a gift that unites past and present, a gift of genius and love, a gift that consecrates a poet's life' - The Wichita Eagle. '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. 'The intentions of Merwin's poetry are as broad as the biosphere yet as intimate as a whisper. He conveys in the sweet simplicity of grounded language a sense of the self where it belongs, floating between heaven, earth, and the underground' - PETER DAVISON, Atlantic Monthly. '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

Customer Reviews

The Shadow of Sirius
After hearing a review of this book on NPR and discussion with the author, W.S. Merwin, I knew I had to purchase it. I'm so glad I did! I can open to any page and enjoy the beautiful turn of phrase and imagery that Merwin offers. It's my favorite book of poetry to date. I'm particularly fond of the poem on page 91, One of the Butterflies. I highly recommend this book!

What a marvel this humble book of wisdom shared
Perhaps the best description of this latest book of W. S. Merwin comes from these lines from his poem "Codex": "It was a late book given up for lost/ again and again with its sentences/ bare at last and phrases that seemed transparent/ revealing what had been there the whole way." This is one of Merwin's finest works coming near the end of a long career of sharing his quiet and intuitive vision of life and writing. Anyone who misses this misses a great deal. His voice is humble and wise.

A nice change of pace
Great book of poetry. I am not an expert, so I am speaking as an average reader. I find the words that are written paint a graphic picture of the content the author is trying to get across. I have always wanted to read more poetry, but have a hard time reading some of the classic texts. This was the first time I have been able to ready the tome from cover to cover.

The book got here fast.