This is the Library of America volume that contains the last few Merwin books I’ve reviewed: The Vixen, The Folding Cliffs, The River Sound, The Pupil and The Shadow of Sirius. I’ve reviewed all five of those books individually, so I typically wouldn’t necessarily review this omnibus edition except there are a couple of things to say. This book does contain some previously uncollected poems at the end, though only a few pages. They’re fine.
But the main thing is that I have to actually make some negative comments here, which is deeply painful, given just how much I love the Library of America. The simple fact is that Merwin would have been better served with a three-volume set of collected poems instead of the two-volume set that we got. And, yes, I do understand that even a two-volume set of a modern poet like Merwin is a pretty tough sell, so I get it. But the thing is that the effort to squeeze all five of the Merwin books that they put in this volume into one volume leads to some really bad formatting issues. The Folding Cliffs is the worst served; the original 350-page novel is compressed into just over 200 pages in this volume, so you can imagine the font-size in that section. It’s just so tiny as to be really hard and tedious to read which is something that this book in particular shouldn’t be. It should be epic and captivating and a page-turner; but this edition renders it kind of headache inducing and eye straining. So this is a case where I recommend using the Library of America edition as a guide as far as what to read, but go get stand-alone editions if possible, especially of The Folding Cliffs, which is a much easier read when the font isn’t the size of an ant. So, I basically recommend everything that’s collected in this omnibus, but not the omnibus itself. Kind of a weird situation. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – the selection of books in this omnibus is great, but the presentation is severely hampered by the compression of so much into one volume; these are best read in stand-alone editions. 2 ½ stars.