Migration: New & Selected Poems

Migration: New & Selected Poems

<div><B><p>Named one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year by <I>The New York Times</I>.</B></p><p>Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry</p><p>Named by <I>O</I> as one of the "20 Books of Poetry Everyone Should Own"</p><p>“The poems in <I>Migration</I> speak a life-long belief in the power of words to awaken our drowsy souls and see the world with compassionate interconnection.”—National Book Award judges’ statement</p><p>“The publication of W. S. Merwin’s selected and new poems is one of those landmark events in the literary world.”—<I>Los Angeles Times</I></p><p>W. S. Merwin is the most influential American poet of the last half-century—an artist who has transfigured and reinvigorated the vision of poetry for our time. <I>Migration: New and Selected Poems </I>is that case. This 540-page distillation—selected by Merwin from fifteen diverse volumes—is a gathering of the best poems from a profound body of work, accented by a selection of distinctive new poems.</p><p>As an undergraduate at Princeton University, Merwin was advised by John Berryman to “get down on your knees and pray to the muse every day.” <I>Migration</I> represents the bounty of those prayers. Over the last fifty years, Merwin’s muse has led him beyond the formal verse of his early years to revolutionary open forms that engage a vast array of influences and possibilities. As Adrienne Rich wrote of Merwin’s work: “I would be shamelessly jealous of this poetry, if I didn’t take so much from it into my own life.”</p><p> <B>W. S. Merwin</B> is the author of over fifty books of poetry, prose, and translation. He lives in Hawaii, where he raises endangered palm trees.</p><BR></div>