And I am he
With whom on a desperate hill, because I was
The closest combatant, always last night
You wrestled
With his second collection of poems, Merwin takes a massive leap forward after his promising, but very flawed debut. In this book, there’s a surprising focus on longer poems, some of the longest Merwin would write for decades actually and in telling actual stories. The longest poem in the book, for instance, East of the Sun & West of the Moon, is a lengthy & beautiful retelling of a pretty standard folk tale. You can tell there’s a lot of British folk influence here as Merwin moves in a balladic direction and the poetry is vivid and beautiful. The first section of the book has the shorter poems and the second section the longer ones and the book ends with a poem called Canso, itself divided into three parts and it’s a really beautiful, intricate piece of work. A lot of people think Merwin doesn’t really achieve greatness until later; I’m not one of them. This is his second book and his first great one. 4 stars.
tl;dr – a huge leap forward for Merwin’s poetry, this second collection is his first great book, a beautifully written riff on ballads. 4 stars.