Present Company

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Present Company Pub. Date: 6/1/2007 Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
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Present Company Pub. Date: 9/1/2005 Publisher: Copper Canyon Press

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Overview

“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 underground.”—The Atlantic Monthly

“W.S. Merwin is our strongest poet.”—The New York Times Review of Books

In this new masterwork from one of America’s foremost poets, W.S. Merwin guides his readers to universal themes through worldly specifics. Akin to Neruda’s Elemental Odes, every poem in Present Company directly addresses the people and things of daily life, as in “To the Thief at the Airport” or “To Lingering Regrets.”

To This May

They know so much more now about the heart we are told but the world still seems to come one at a time one day one year one season and here it is spring once more with its birds nesting in the holes in the walls its morning finding the first time its light pretending not to move always beginning as it goes

These poems to the world are playful, deadly serious, and full of wonder. Whether writing of an unused vehicle in “To Zbigniew Herbert’s Bicycle” or watching fireworks from a distance in “To the Coming Winter,” Merwin’s poems create a rare and compelling intimacy. There is no one writing today like W.S. Merwin.

Poet and translator W.S. Merwin has long been committed to artistic, political, and environmental causes in both word and deed. He has received nearly every major literary accolade, including the Pulitzer, Tanning, Lannan, and Bollingen prizes. His most recent award is the International Golden Wreath from the Struga Foundation, a longstanding literary honor that, in its 70-year history, has been offered to only three English-speaking poets. W.S. Merwin lives in Hawaii, where he cultivates endangered palms.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Merwin's 24th volume of poems is his first since last year's massive new-and-collected Migration: it may be the much-lauded poet's clearest and most unified in many years, and it is almost certainly his most moving. Following Kenneth Koch's New Addresses, its 101 poems address a person, place, object or abstraction ("To the Shadow," "To the Stone Paddock by the Far Barn"). Almost all seek, and many achieve, a deliberate pathos over the passage of time: "I will wait and you can follow alone," concludes Merwin (who won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize) in "To Lili's Walk," "and between us the night has come and gone." Often stark, at times nearly imageless, the poems recall particular moments in Merwin's own life, comment on the act of writing or introduce gentle humor. ("To the Consolations of Philosophy" begins "Thank you but/ not just at the moment.") Some of the best, such as "To My Grandfathers," remember dead family members and friends. Short-lined free verse pieces "To the Soul" and "To Forgetting" may become new anthology signatures or provoke new attention to this elder statesman of American verse. The book's greatest weakness may be its length; so many lyric poems with similar structures and near-identical tones make it harder for the best few to stand out. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The eight lyrical odes included in Merwin's recent Migration: New & Selected Poems were harbingers of this full-length collection. Nearing 80, the Pulitzer Prize winner seems especially mindful of age and mortality, and these poems-like a series of heartfelt thank-you notes-offer homage to the things of this world. In a manner that recalls the cool, spare diction of H.D., Merwin addresses the local and the nondescript ("To the Dust of the Road"; "To a Mosquito") as well as the abstract and the universal ("To Purity"; "To Absence"). In the plainest language possible, he attempts to tease out the essence of the things that he personifies. The tongue is "you for whom/ all the languages have been named." Mistakes are "the ones who/ were not recognized/ in time." In the corner of his eye, "a moment/ appears before I/ can recognize it/ yet when I turn to face you/ you have stepped aside/ leaving me only/ the look of things/ I once thought I knew." The emotional timber rarely rises above muted melancholy, and Merwin's thoughtful, measured pace never quickens, but the poems are suffused with a warmth and clarity achieved over six decades of disciplined dedication to his art. Recommended for larger poetry collections.-Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781556592270
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Publication date: 9/1/2005
Pages: 120
Sales rank: 956,913
Product dimensions: 6.40 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 0.60 (d)

Meet the Author

W.S. Merwin is one of America's leading poets. His prizes include the 2005 National Book Award for his collected poems, Migration, the Pulitzer Prize, the Stevens Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Lannan Foundation. He is the author of dozens of books of poetry and translations. He lives in Hawaii, where he cultivates endangered palm trees.

	To this May	3
	To the soul	4
	To a reflection	5
	To the face in the mirror	6
	To waiting	7
	To impatience	8
	To age	10
	To lingering regrets	12
	To my teeth	13
	To the ancient order of legs	14
	To my legs	16
	To the tongue	17
	To the gift of sight	18
	To the corner of the eye	20
	To the shadow	21
	To another William	22
	To history	23
	To the unlikely event	24
	To a departing companion	26
	To Lili's walk	27
	To a friend travelling	28
	To the sorrow string	29
	To -	30
	To the consolations of philosophy	31
	To grief	33
	To absence	34
	To the knife	35
	To prose	37
	To duty	39
	To Billy's car	40
	To the present visitors	42
	To the present tense	43
	To the air	44
	To Muku dreaming	46
	To the dust of the road	48
	To that stretch of canal	49
	To the blue stork	50
	To the sound of the gate	52
	To the stone paddock by the far barn	53
	To a few cherries	55
	To my mother	56
	To my grandfathers	57
	To my Aunt Margie	58
	To my father's houses	59
	To my brother	60
	To Micky	61
	To Doris	62
	To the old	63
	To the dog stars	65
	To the tray dancers	66
	To the mistakes	68
	To luck	69
	To the blank spaces	70
	To the morning (I)	71
	To Monday	72
	To the long table	74
	To the margin	75
	To the middle	76
	To the next time	77
	To the light of September	78
	To the words	80
	To the grass of autumn	81
	To ashes	83
	To Zbigniew Herbert's bicycle	84
	To the coming winter	86
	To the smell of water	87
	To the beginning of rain	89
	To a mosquito	91
	To glass	93
	To purity	94
	To salt	95
	To the lightning	96
	To the escape of light	98
	To a leaf falling in winter	100
	To the fire	101
	To smoke	102
	To forgetting	103
	To the wires overhead	105
	To a tortoiseshell lyre	106
	To the gods	107
	To the veil	109
	To the way back	110
	To the thief at the airport	112
	To the afterlife	113
	To finding again	114
	To the surgeon Kevin Lin	116
	To days of winter	117
	To a friend turning fifty	118
	To being late	120
	To the morning (2)	121
	To the moss	122
	To an old acacia	123
	To the story	124
	To a dormouse	126
	To the parting year	128
	To the new year	129
	To the unfinished	130
	To Paula	131
	To myself	132
	To the happy few	133
	To the book	134

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Anonymous

Posted October 11, 2005

On Merwin: Words of Praise Fail

How does one write critically about the abundant beauty of the poetry of W.S. Merwin? Long acclaimed as one of our most poignant and important poets, his newest collection is an endless stream of homages to fleeting thoughts, ideas, and other delicacies encounter by the informed eye and heart. Merwin keeps his language simple but continues to prod our senses with challenging concepts. In these one hundred odd poems he wanders through our perceptions and imaginations and strikes chords familiar and foreign, all with the flowing beauty of his carefully molded words. These poems seem to be odes, not so much to people as to natural matters and objects and notions. In 'To a Falling Leaf in Winter': 'At sundown when a day's words/ have gathered at the feet of the trees/ lining up in silence/ to enter the long corridors/ of the roots into which they/ pass one by one thinking/ that they remember the place/ as they fell themselves climbing/ away from their only sound/ while they are being forgotten/ by their bright circumstances/ they rise through all the rings/ listening again/ afterward as they/ listened once and they come/ to where the leaves used to live/ during their lives but have gone now/ and they too take the next step/ beyond the reach of meaning.'There are no adequate descriptives for Merwin's gifts. They are simply there for the savouring of those with quiet hearts to read and hear. Highly recommended. Grady Harp
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