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,...

"From backyard to barnyard, from hawks to hummingbirds, from pelicans to peacocks, from Coleridge's albatross to Keats's nightingale to Poe's raven - all manner of feathered beings, the inspiration for poetic flights of fancy through the ages, are gathered together in this volume."--BOOK JACKET

The volume that brings together, for the first time, the complete works of one of the giants of American poetry. Merrill touched each of his subjects, whether worldly or spiritual, with silvery wit and metrical music. A bracing glass of ouzo, afternoons at the gym with a gay partner, conversations with deceased friends via the Ouija board, a midnight swim -- all were occasions for contemplation and high art. Here are all the poems -- from his earliest...