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Unchopping a Tree
There’s no mystery to chopping down a tree. But how do you put back together a tree that’s been felled? Mystical instructions are required, and that’s what W. S. Merwin provides in his prose piece “Unchopping a Tree,” appearing for the first time in a self-contained volume. Written with a poet’s grace, an ecologist’s insights, and a Buddhist’s reverence for life, this elegant work describes the difficult, sacred job of reconstructing a tree. Step by step, page by page, with Merwin’s humble authority, secrets are revealed, and the destroyed tree rises from the forest floor. Unchopping a Tree opens with simplicity and “Start with the leaves, the small twigs, and the nest that have been shaken, ripped, or broken off by the fall; these must be gathered and attached once again to their respective places.” W. S. Merwin, like many conservationists, is quick to “When we destroy the so-called natural world around us we’re simply destroying ourselves. And I think it’s irreversible.” Thus the tree takes on a scale that begs the reader’s compassion, and one tree is a parable for the restoration of all nature.
48 pages, Hardcover
First published March 11, 2014
1 person is currently reading
309 people want to read
About the author
W.S. Merwin
192 books347 followersWilliam Stanley Merwin was an American poet, credited with over fifty books of poetry, translation and prose.
William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island's rainforests.
Merwin received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 and 2009; the National Book Award for Poetry in 2005, and the Tanning Prize—one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets—as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2010, the Library of Congress named him the 17th United States Poet Laureate.
William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island's rainforests.
Merwin received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 and 2009; the National Book Award for Poetry in 2005, and the Tanning Prize—one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets—as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2010, the Library of Congress named him the 17th United States Poet Laureate.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 21, 2019
The art by Liz Ward was great, I would like to see more of her work. The concept overall was thought provoking, in that it makes you consider the undoing of our actions on nature.
October 20, 2019
Not quite sure of its overall meaning but it was most interesting. I absolutely loved the drawings by Liz Ward
December 29, 2015
This is a very short but profound book. It reminds us that it is far easier to chop down a tree than to unchop one. Something to ponder.
December 14, 2024
4 stars - Prose writing arranged formally as a multi-page poem, a work that originally appeared in "The Miner's Pale Children" (1970) as an essay or commentary about human destruction of the earth's environment.
The poem is a step-by-step list of detailed instructions about how to put a dead tree back together and stand it upright again. In order to do this, one has to find the correct dead leaves that have fallen from it and reattach them to the correct twigs, and you have to find each wood chip and bit of sawdust to glue into their "former positions." Merwin offers the impossible instructions with flashes of humor, such as "You must find your own ways of coping with this problem," and also transcendence, as when he suggests that your labor will "lead you on to speculations about the parentage of beauty itself, to which you will return."
I think the poem offers a response, anticipates a counterpoint, to Merwin's somewhat later poem, "Exercise," that was published in "Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment" (1973), where he lists a series of things to forget, as a way to free the mind of preconceptions, as a way to see and experience everything anew. Maybe he thought, in 1970, in terms of work to be done, and then, soon after, realized you can't genuinely fix things that you don't see clearly, that you don't deeply understand. My own sense of the two works, read together, is that action and forgetting are integral parts of life's riddle. And that Merwin delights in posing such riddles.
Less speculatively, I think "Unchopping a Tree" in part spoofs efforts of the 1970s to figure out how solitary individuals can fix problems that pervade entire ecosystems, as were found in The Whole Earth Catalog for example. In setting out the laughable and also hopeless instructions he infers that nature's intricacy is something irreplaceable, is something we should admire and respect and, especially, not mess with. Engineered solutions, metaphorically speaking, using scaffolds, chains, tackle and adhesives won't do the job. I think his real point is that we must use biological means to fix a biological problem, i.e., we must view the planet earth as a biological entity.
Simultaneously with the spoofing, I think Merwin expresses a deep sincerity and earnestness, along the lines of Wendell Berry, in suggesting that the impossible work he suggests with tongue-in-cheek specificity is necessary and unavoidable. His insistence is revealed when he says, "Practice, practice. Put your hope in that." And when he says, "care now is likely to save you considerable trouble later." And in saying, "this is not the labor of a moment." I think he is saying that we must do this kind of work, impossible and hopeless and fruitless as it is, if only to engage in a ritual honoring of our surroundings, even if the end result is only a dead monument (a standing but dead tree, "a kind of tribute" as he puts it) to remind us who we are on the planet, that we are a species of life that should lovingly and attentively care for our surroundings. He concludes by asking, "What more can you do?" Then answers by saying, "Everything is going to have to be put back."
It appears that Merwin took his own advice, not through an engineered reconstruction of something dead, but in a biological solution to local environmental degradation, by planting trees over a period of thirty years on property that he owned on the island of Maui in Hawai'i.
I rated this powerful poem-book with only four starts and not five because of the wan, distracting illustrations that look like microscopic slides of a living tree's cellular structure but which pad the poem unnecessarily. The fact that the artist is or was a professor at Trinity University, and that the book was published by Trinity University Press (and that the artist received support from a Brown Foundation fellowship to complete the pictures at the Dora Marr House in Menérbes, France) makes the hardcover book more of a CV booster and pretentious artifact rather than the serious call to arms that Merwin intended. A further irony is that the book was printed in Malaysia, when a poem of this kind (with its manifesto-like underpinnings) should be copied out by hand on recycled or hand-made paper, then passed along to ecology-minded allies, 1970s-style.
The poem is a step-by-step list of detailed instructions about how to put a dead tree back together and stand it upright again. In order to do this, one has to find the correct dead leaves that have fallen from it and reattach them to the correct twigs, and you have to find each wood chip and bit of sawdust to glue into their "former positions." Merwin offers the impossible instructions with flashes of humor, such as "You must find your own ways of coping with this problem," and also transcendence, as when he suggests that your labor will "lead you on to speculations about the parentage of beauty itself, to which you will return."
I think the poem offers a response, anticipates a counterpoint, to Merwin's somewhat later poem, "Exercise," that was published in "Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment" (1973), where he lists a series of things to forget, as a way to free the mind of preconceptions, as a way to see and experience everything anew. Maybe he thought, in 1970, in terms of work to be done, and then, soon after, realized you can't genuinely fix things that you don't see clearly, that you don't deeply understand. My own sense of the two works, read together, is that action and forgetting are integral parts of life's riddle. And that Merwin delights in posing such riddles.
Less speculatively, I think "Unchopping a Tree" in part spoofs efforts of the 1970s to figure out how solitary individuals can fix problems that pervade entire ecosystems, as were found in The Whole Earth Catalog for example. In setting out the laughable and also hopeless instructions he infers that nature's intricacy is something irreplaceable, is something we should admire and respect and, especially, not mess with. Engineered solutions, metaphorically speaking, using scaffolds, chains, tackle and adhesives won't do the job. I think his real point is that we must use biological means to fix a biological problem, i.e., we must view the planet earth as a biological entity.
Simultaneously with the spoofing, I think Merwin expresses a deep sincerity and earnestness, along the lines of Wendell Berry, in suggesting that the impossible work he suggests with tongue-in-cheek specificity is necessary and unavoidable. His insistence is revealed when he says, "Practice, practice. Put your hope in that." And when he says, "care now is likely to save you considerable trouble later." And in saying, "this is not the labor of a moment." I think he is saying that we must do this kind of work, impossible and hopeless and fruitless as it is, if only to engage in a ritual honoring of our surroundings, even if the end result is only a dead monument (a standing but dead tree, "a kind of tribute" as he puts it) to remind us who we are on the planet, that we are a species of life that should lovingly and attentively care for our surroundings. He concludes by asking, "What more can you do?" Then answers by saying, "Everything is going to have to be put back."
It appears that Merwin took his own advice, not through an engineered reconstruction of something dead, but in a biological solution to local environmental degradation, by planting trees over a period of thirty years on property that he owned on the island of Maui in Hawai'i.
I rated this powerful poem-book with only four starts and not five because of the wan, distracting illustrations that look like microscopic slides of a living tree's cellular structure but which pad the poem unnecessarily. The fact that the artist is or was a professor at Trinity University, and that the book was published by Trinity University Press (and that the artist received support from a Brown Foundation fellowship to complete the pictures at the Dora Marr House in Menérbes, France) makes the hardcover book more of a CV booster and pretentious artifact rather than the serious call to arms that Merwin intended. A further irony is that the book was printed in Malaysia, when a poem of this kind (with its manifesto-like underpinnings) should be copied out by hand on recycled or hand-made paper, then passed along to ecology-minded allies, 1970s-style.
February 25, 2022
Working on a little blog post. This is an important concept, but seem unlikely to gain traction or reach it's?target audience? Which is who, exactly? I found it on a cart at the library where I work part time. Seems to be a donation and unlikely to get cataloged.
December 14, 2016
What more can you do? What more can you do?
But there is nothing more you can do.
Others are waiting.
Everything is going to have to be put back.
But there is nothing more you can do.
Others are waiting.
Everything is going to have to be put back.
January 1, 2019
Wonderful read - but then Merwin's work is terrific.
November 18, 2020
Merwin :’) very sweet little book that serves as a good reminder that sometimes there’s nothing more you can do
September 9, 2023
A lovely meditation on the damages that cannot, in the end, be undone. But the call to try anyway.
“What more can you do? What more can you do?”
“What more can you do? What more can you do?”
September 9, 2014
This is my very first book that I have won in a Good Reads giveaway. However, I can’t really call this a true “first read,” as I was already familiar with this particular work and author. Originally this one piece of writing was from a collection of stories first published in 1970. Oddly, I came across this back in college through a textbook of all things, which anyone that has ever had the experience of reading one of these will most likely agree that even when you find something to your liking in one of these the ensuing assignment tends to kill any joy one might have originally found in it.
This book is wonderful exception to this general rule and the title of this work and author’s name has stayed with me fondly for many a year afterwards. So, when I saw this giveaway listed, the faint memories of having actually liked it came flooding back to me and I entered to win this immediately.
Normally, I am not necessarily drawn to anything along the lines that is found here in this small piece of writing, which essentially can be said to deal with the care of “mother earth” in spiritual vein. Naturally, I’m not against the idea or sentiment as a rule but rather tend to have a problem more in how these things are usually presented. Overall, I find them to be overly dreamy lamenting statements that tend to preach from the chapters torn from the holier-than-thou scriptures.
This particular work does not have these qualities but reads more like a matter-of-fact manual of how to undo the harm done to a tree. It also possesses a certain dry humor as well that comes across more like science fiction than anything else. This is a novel and refreshing way of saying the same things that these other preachy diatribes attempt to do. The result is a beautiful work in its understated simplicity and is illustrated throughout with prints that are subtle in color and design that portray the microscopic celluloid structures of plants.
The book itself instructs the reader in the strikingly absurd premise of how to restore a tree to its former glory, piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit. All of which is told in a very serious deadpan manner. As it progresses in its convincing and earnest way, one cannot be blind to the fact of the absolute futility of such an endeavor. Naturally, this is precisely the whole point of this book. What is done cannot be undone…and what is more irreplaceable than a lost tree when it takes decades, if not centuries, to grow another?
In this way, without overtly beating you over the head with any dogma we follow these instructions to their inevitable end, a completely restored tree that is precariously fragile and is a mere shadow of its former self. Another way of saying that even if such a thing was possible, we still would be powerless to duplicate the original.
One last thing, since we’re on the subject. Not to be appear ungrateful or to literally look a gift horse in the mouth, as it were, but there is a certain irony here that is not found anywhere in this in this book that cannot be overlooked. This is an extremely short piece that originally was no longer than a page and a half in length in my textbook back in the day. Only, here it has been stretched out to fill a slim volume of 48 pages all in all. One has to ask, “How many trees were felled in the making of this?” It begs the question as to why in the interest of space wasn’t at least a few more of the author’s work included here so as make the printing of this worthwhile and to not squander the resources so blatantly.
This book is wonderful exception to this general rule and the title of this work and author’s name has stayed with me fondly for many a year afterwards. So, when I saw this giveaway listed, the faint memories of having actually liked it came flooding back to me and I entered to win this immediately.
Normally, I am not necessarily drawn to anything along the lines that is found here in this small piece of writing, which essentially can be said to deal with the care of “mother earth” in spiritual vein. Naturally, I’m not against the idea or sentiment as a rule but rather tend to have a problem more in how these things are usually presented. Overall, I find them to be overly dreamy lamenting statements that tend to preach from the chapters torn from the holier-than-thou scriptures.
This particular work does not have these qualities but reads more like a matter-of-fact manual of how to undo the harm done to a tree. It also possesses a certain dry humor as well that comes across more like science fiction than anything else. This is a novel and refreshing way of saying the same things that these other preachy diatribes attempt to do. The result is a beautiful work in its understated simplicity and is illustrated throughout with prints that are subtle in color and design that portray the microscopic celluloid structures of plants.
The book itself instructs the reader in the strikingly absurd premise of how to restore a tree to its former glory, piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit. All of which is told in a very serious deadpan manner. As it progresses in its convincing and earnest way, one cannot be blind to the fact of the absolute futility of such an endeavor. Naturally, this is precisely the whole point of this book. What is done cannot be undone…and what is more irreplaceable than a lost tree when it takes decades, if not centuries, to grow another?
In this way, without overtly beating you over the head with any dogma we follow these instructions to their inevitable end, a completely restored tree that is precariously fragile and is a mere shadow of its former self. Another way of saying that even if such a thing was possible, we still would be powerless to duplicate the original.
One last thing, since we’re on the subject. Not to be appear ungrateful or to literally look a gift horse in the mouth, as it were, but there is a certain irony here that is not found anywhere in this in this book that cannot be overlooked. This is an extremely short piece that originally was no longer than a page and a half in length in my textbook back in the day. Only, here it has been stretched out to fill a slim volume of 48 pages all in all. One has to ask, “How many trees were felled in the making of this?” It begs the question as to why in the interest of space wasn’t at least a few more of the author’s work included here so as make the printing of this worthwhile and to not squander the resources so blatantly.
June 3, 2014
A philosophical prose-poem that expresses concern for nature. I do not know what Merwin was saying in his poem or what message he hoped we would receive. He writes of an imagined process of putting a tree back together after it has been chopped down. The poem took me to a time when I drove through the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State after loggers had clear cut large sections of the Olympic Forest. I wanted to put it back together and preserve the treasure that was lost. In Merwin's poem, he has to hurry as he has many trees to fix. He puts this first one in order and worries that it will not be strong enough to stand the onslaught of the motion of the clouds. This left me with a feeling of powerlessness.
The drawings accompanying the poem were beautiful and maintained the feeling of the cellular structure of the tree.
December 8, 2014
It was sad to learn that W.S. Merwin’s planned February reading in Bellingham had to be cancelled due to the author’s shaky health, but reading this intimate book feels like spending time in his hallowed presence. The 89 year-old poet, translator and prose stylist instructs how to reassemble a tree that has been felled, in language that is both direct yet deep with multiple meanings. Part prose poem, part ecology lesson and part Zen instruction manual, Unchopping a Tree shares a mystical blueprint for healing the planet — the intricate, often invisible web of biological life — that our species so casually destroys. The book is made even more unique by artist Liz Ward’s contribution of eleven delicate drawings depicting the cellular life of trees.
June 9, 2014
Unsettling with a meaning hard to pin down. Gorgeous book. My favorite thing is the colophon about how "Trinity University Press strives to produce its books using methods and materials in an environmentally sensitive manner." One becomes aware that the book itself is a tree that remained "chopped."
May 11, 2014
This short, quick read book is a poetically written story about how one would methodically, delicately and effectively "unchop a tree" - basically put a tree that has been chopped down back together. It is a sweet, short story that leaves you with a smile and wandering thought.
May 13, 2014
Received this through first reads. Maybe I am not philosophical enough, but I saw no point to any of it. It just made no sense.
May 16, 2014
Very inventive and abstract in concept. Enjoyable. I would like to thank the author and publisher for this book i won in the Goodreads First Reads contest.
August 18, 2014
Lovely idea, beautifully executed.
April 11, 2017
Absolutely beautiful
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews