When the pain of the world finds words
they sound like joy
There’s nearly a hundred poems in this book; many of them are quite short, of course, but very evocative. I think the book does reflect the title in the way it treats loss. The poems here are really filled with a kind of melancholy sense of incompleteness and loneliness. The poems aren’t bleak exactly and there are moments of real redemption to be found here. But Merwin is certainly missing the accompaniment of the title in a very palpable way and perhaps even the shortness of the poems plays into this. I found this collection to be very emotionally evocative in a direct and powerful way. Sometimes you marvel at Merwin’s artistry; other times, you feel his emotions in a profound way. This is definitely one of the second kind of books, though there’s obviously a great deal of artistry. This is a very heartfelt book, I think, about the absence of things. This isn’t a book about emptiness, but about a nagging, melancholy sense of lack and perhaps that’s the more complex emotion and the one more relatable. It’s a quiet masterpiece this one is, not filled with flights of fancy or provocative poetry, but the emotional resonance is undeniable. 4 stars.
tl;dr – a quiet, more subdued Merwin explores feelings of loss and melancholy in this heartfelt collection of short poems; not bleak, even occasionally hopeful in spite of loss. 4 stars.