Merwin, W.S. Books

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition (Penguin Classics)

Pablo Neruda

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

the most romantic book of love poems ever written 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

perhaps this is the most romantic and most beautiful book of love poems ever written. every word, every stanza is so easily read, so quickly understood, like an arrow to the heard. give this gift to your lover and they will never forget it.

One of my favorite writers 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

In this duel language edition, the voice is soft, sincere, and refreshing. His language borders on a passion that seems to rouse the senses like skydiving, or waiting for first rain. I recommend this book and all his books to the poetry reader.

Seasons of Love 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

"Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul."
(from "I Remember You As You Were")

After watching "The Postman" I became interested in purchasing my first book of Pablo Neruda's poems. Needless to say I went into the experience with very high expectations.

The poems are awash with nature images and much less erotic than I expected. Most seem more romantic and at times captivating. They do demand your full attention as they present vivid images one after the other and reading the poems more slowly has many advantages. At times I was surprised by their complexity.

"The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire."
(from "Here I Love You")

Throughout the book there are illustrations by Pablo Picasso. They don't really seem to mirror the meanings in the poems and yet they seem to express the language of the body.

I expected the poems to be less veiled in mystery and more infused with images of erotic love. Still these poems can be enjoyed for their passionate intimacy and natural sensuality.

~The Rebecca Review

Editorial Review:

The Nobel Prize–winning poet’s most popular work

When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin’s incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.

The Architect's Brother

Robert ParkeHarrison

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The Architect's Brother 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Wow. That's how I'm going to start this off. My first inkling was to give the book four stars, you know, seem objective to the reader, maybe have a bigger influence. The truth is objectivity has nothing to do with this book. It is full of magic, suprise, wonder: nothing but true subjectivity. That is where its beauty lies, like a receiving a small bit of mail from an unknown sender, each page is a tale for you to tell, as well as ParkeHarrison. By far my favorite photography book, second only to Rocky Schenk, Photographs. Highly Recommended, also beautifully bound and LARGE. Take it from this poor college student, well worth the money.

Photographic Art 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Recently on PBS, I saw a small clip of the collaboration work of the photographer (who is also the subject in the photographs) and his painter wife. The artistic creation of staging and dark room manipulations were something no one produces but these two. Results are reminiscent of a strange dream or turn of the century photography of catastrophic Earth events. I had to find a book of their work. The first books I found were $300. but fortunately found a much better priced one. I not only wanted it for myself and friends, but also to hand it down to one of my grandkids. Thank you Mr/Mrs. ParkHarrison for your unusual vision and I hope to see your future productions.

The Dream Songs

John Berryman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

To like without much understanding 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 9 people found this review helpful.

I am not very knowledgable about Berryman and his work. I certainly have not read the poems with the time and intensity of a number of the reviewers on this site. I have an impression of Berryman and his work. It is of something vaguely likeable occaisionally able to provide a line which hits home. It is of a very variable voice in which the disorder and the breakdown somehow make the text too mixed- up.
Perhaps this is unfair. Bellow thought Berryman the best, and among other poets he too was understood as one of the best of his time.
Perhaps then I should let his lines , lines of one sonnet at least speak for themselves:

These lovely motions of the air, the breeze,
tell me I'm not in hell, thojugh round me the dead
lie in their limp postures
dramatizing the dreadful word 'instead'
for lively Henry, fit for debaucheries
and bird- of- paradise vestures

only his heart is elsewhere , down with them
& down with Delmore specially, the new ghost
haunting Henry most:
though fierce the claims of others, coimedela crime
came the Hebrew spectre , on a note of woe
and Join me O.

'Down with them all!'Henry suddenly cried
Their deaths were theirs. I wait on for my own,
I dare say it won't be long,
I have tried to be them, god knows I have tried,
but they are past it all, I have not done,
which brings me to the end of this song.

Editorial Review:

This edition combines The Dream Songs, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1965, and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1969 and contains all 385 songs. Of The Dream Songs, A. Alvarez wrote in The Observer, “A major achievement. He has written an elegy on his brilliant generation and, in the process, he has also written an elegy on himself.”

Migration: New & Selected Poems

W.S. Merwin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Named one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times.

"The poems in Migration 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

"The publication of W. S. Merwin's selected and new poems is one of those landmark events in the literary world."-Los Angeles Times

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. Migration: New and Selected Poems 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.

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." Migration 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."

W. S. Merwin is the author of over fifty books of poetry, prose, and translation. He lives in Hawaii, where he raises endangered palm trees.

Present Company

W.S. Merwin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"One of America's greatest living poets."-The Washington Post Book World

"Merwin keeps his language simple but his perceptions complex. Classical in their lines of inquiry and restraint yet vital in their attunement to the here and now, these personal odes and musings on daily existence and the cycles of life are, by turns, bemused and exalted . . . each poem infuses the collection with buoyancy and light."-Booklist

Now in paperback, W.S. Merwin's latest masterwork-which reviewers have described as "meditative," "playful," and "lithely beautiful"-guides readers to universal themes through worldly specifics. Akin to Pablo Neruda's Elemental Odes, every poem in Present Company directly addresses the people and things of daily life, as in "To the Thief at the Airport" or "To Lingering Regrets."

"To This May"

They know so much more now about
the heart we are told but the world
still seems to come one at a time
one day one year one season and here
it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time
its light pretending not to move
always beginning as it goes

On Entering the Sea: The Erotic and Other Poetry of Nizar Qabbani (Poetry Series)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

One of the greatest love poets that ever lived 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Don't let the fact that his words have been translated from their original Arabic dissuade you from believing that somehow the work isn't as honest as it should be. Qabbani's work is so powerful it hardly matter shwat language it is in. In short, easily read dollops of wit measured out with a voice of quiet urging, he has given us work that transcends time and politics, while being above-it-all.

"If you know a man
who loves you more than I
guide me to him
so I may first congratulate
hom on his constancy
and later, kill him."

If poetry ever had a Luther Vandross, it was Pablo Neruda. If it ever had a Barry White, it was Qabbani.

DAMMNN! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

So powerful, so sensual, so incredible. His poetry is earth shaking and primal.

Unrivalled Passionate Poetry 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 6 people found this review helpful.

These are the most passioante poems ever written. Some wail after unrequited love. Some bemoan the one that got away or an opportunity missed or ruined by thier own action. Many express devotion to the love that is present.

And then there are the political poems of longing for a lost land, agony for the end of a way of life and indignation at injustice. He was a great advocate for women's rights, but that work is not included in this collection.

I do not undestand why Qabbani is not better known in the US. In my opinion, he is far superior to Neruda (who was my favorite before I knew Qabbani). Less cliches, but more direct at the same time. And you hear what he has to say and reflect "that is exactly my feeling in this situation, why did I not think of that expresion...could it be said in any other way?"

I discovered him overseas, a few days before he died. I was so distressed to hear of his death, even though I only was familiar with his work a few days. In the Arab world, musicians of all stripes and capabilities attempt to use his poems as lyrics for their music. He has poems for every mood and every problem, each of them speak straight to the soul with emotion. Even people who can not normally appreciate poetry will become obsessed with Qabbani, when reading this collection.

Editorial Review:

In this collection of poems by one of the Ar ab world''s greatest love poets, the author pays homage to th e grace and beauty of women and takes on those who dare to i mpose taboos on women and love. '

The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam (New York Review Books Classics)

Osip Mandelstam

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

His poems living still 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 22 people found this review helpful.

MANDELSTAM

We do not know the way to the darkness of the word
or the excellent silence
concealed inside our poems
we only know the drumbeat of our own pain
and the flickering madness of a land's best lights lost

All we are and can be
is a poem
that will never come home again.

Stalin's death is Russia's life
The man Mandelstam murdered
His poems living still.

Editorial Review:

Osip Mandelstam is a central figure not only in modern Russian but in world poetry, the author of some of the most haunting and memorable poems of the twentieth century. A contemporary of Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetayeva, and Boris Pasternak, a touchstone for later masters such as Paul Celan and Robert Lowell, Mandelstam was a crucial instigator of the "revolution of the word" that took place in St. Petersburg, only to be crushed by the Bolshevik Revolution. Mandelstam's last poems, written in the interval between his exile to the provinces by Stalin and his death in the Gulag, are an extraordinary testament to the endurance of art in the presence of terror.

This book represents a collaboration between the scholar Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin, one of contemporary America's finest poets and translators. It also includes Mandelstam's "Conversation on Dante," an uncategorizable work of genius containing the poet's deepest reflections on the nature of the poetic process.

The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca, Francisco Garcia Lorca

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Good, loud poems 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 16 people found this review helpful.

My husband used to read me this book when I was pregnant with my only child. The sound of the poems made her kick. Maybe the poems, but probably it was just the way he read them--in spanish--louder than he ever said anything. My husband never yelled, even when he was angry he just stayed by himself a bit, but he really used to get into these poems. From his childhood, I guess. He tried to translate them himself, but he wasn't very good at it. He would probably say these aren't very good either, no translation is your own after all, but I don't speak spanish, and to me these are close to the way he used to make me feel when he read them. Very lovely, and a little alarming.

I tried reading them to my daughter--she's having a baby in the summer--but it didn't really make anyone feel alarmed. I guess I need to learn to develop my own versions.

Editorial Review:

A reissue of a landmark poetry volume with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner W. S. Merwin. Bilingual.

The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca has introduced generations of American readers to mesmerizing poetry since 1955. Lorca (1898-1937) is admired all over the world for the lyricism, immediacy and clarity of his poetry, as well as for his ability to encompass techniques of the symbolist movement with deeper psychological shadings. But Lorca's poems are, most of all, admired for their beauty. Undercurrents of his major influences—Spanish folk traditions from his native Andalusia and Granada, gypsy ballads, and his friends the surrealists Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel—stream throughout Lorca's work. Poets represented here as translators are as diverse as Stephen Spender, Langston Hughes, Ben Belitt, William Jay Smith, and W.S. Merwin.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A splendid new translation of the classic Arthurian tale of enchantment, adventure, and romance, presented alongside the original Middle English text.

It is the height of Christmas and New Year’s revelry when an enormous knight with brilliant green clothes and skin descends upon King Arthur’s court. He presents a sinister challenge: he will endure a blow of the axe to his neck without offering any resistance, but whoever gives the blow must promise to take the same in exactly a year and a day’s time. The young Sir Gawain quickly rises to the challenge, and the poem tells of the adventures he finds—an almost irresistible seduction, shockingly brutal hunts, and terrifyingly powerful villains—as he endeavors to fulfill his promise.

Capturing the pace, impact, and richly alliterative language of the original text, W. S. Merwin has imparted a new immediacy to a spellbinding narrative, written centuries ago by a poet whose name is now unknown, lost to time. Of the Green Knight, Merwin notes in his foreword: “We seem to recognize him—his splendor, the awe that surrounds him, his menace and his grace—without being able to place him . . . We will never know who the Green Knight is except in our own response to him.”


From the Hardcover edition.

In Parenthesis (New York Review Books)

David Jones

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Editorial Review:

"This writing has to do with some things I saw, felt, and was part of": with quiet modesty, David Jones begins a work that is among the most powerful imaginative efforts to grapple with the carnage of the First World War, a book celebrated by W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot as one of the masterpieces of modern literature. Fusing poetry and prose, gutter talk and high music, wartime terror and ancient myth, Jones, who served as an infantryman on the Western Front, presents a picture at once panoramic and intimate of a world of interminable waiting and unforeseen death. And yet throughout he remains alert to the flashes of humanity that light up the wasteland of war.