Shadow ravine
snow blue as smoke full of sunlight
over black fire
For the first, and I believe the only, time in his career, Merwin published a collection of original poetry in back to back years when this came out in 1978, after The Compass Flower in 1977. True, this is his shortest book of poetry and one of his simplest, but it’s still worthy of note. In this simple little collection, Merwin focuses on short, three line poems. There are a couple of outliers, just because Merwin likes to surprise the reader, but except for one or two, all the poems in this book are just three lines long, quick little snapshots of moments in time. They’re also untitled, separated from each other only by dividers, meaning that you could, if you wanted, read the book as one very long poem made up of three-line stanzas. But the poems are so disparate and wide-ranging that I think it’s better to see it as a collection of short poems. The images are of nature, as usual, and it’s some of his most beautiful work. Also, there’s a small element of playfulness here; a couple of the poems here are almost jokes, or at least they capture small moments of amusement. As I said, this is shortest book and it’s also the book where he sets himself the most restrictive rules. It’s interesting that this comes right after The Compass Flower, a book I called his longest and most expansive. Regardless, as stripped down as this poetry is, it’s striking and often breathlessly beautiful. It’s, I suppose, a smaller masterpiece than some of his other work, but looking at the first four decades of his bibliography (1952 – 1992), I think it’s the book I’ll probably go back to the most. Maybe this is the ultimate vindication of his turn toward minimalism. With these short, quiet, simple poems, Merwin’s given us what I consider to be his greatest book. 4 stars.
tl;dr – Merwin’s shortest & simplest book is, in many ways, his very best, a gorgeous series of moments captured in brief three line poems. 4 stars.