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Selected Poems of Thomas Merton
Poet, Trappist monk, religious philosopher, translator, social the late Thomas Merton was all these things. This classic selection from his great body of poetry affords a comprehensive view of his varied and progressively innovative work. Selected by Mark Van Doren and James Laughlin, this slim volume is now available again as a wonderful showcase of Thomas Merton’s splendid poetry.
140 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
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225 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Merton
582 books1,925 followersThomas Merton, religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. In December 1941 he entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani and in May 1949 he was ordained to priesthood. He was a member of the convent of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.
Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through his study of mystic practice. His interfaith conversation, which preserved both Protestant and Catholic theological positions, helped to build mutual respect via their shared experiences at a period of heightened hostility. He is particularly known for having pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama XIV; Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki; Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He traveled extensively in the course of meeting with them and attending international conferences on religion. In addition, he wrote books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and how Christianity is related to them. This was highly unusual at the time in the United States, particularly within the religious orders.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.
Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through his study of mystic practice. His interfaith conversation, which preserved both Protestant and Catholic theological positions, helped to build mutual respect via their shared experiences at a period of heightened hostility. He is particularly known for having pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama XIV; Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki; Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He traveled extensively in the course of meeting with them and attending international conferences on religion. In addition, he wrote books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and how Christianity is related to them. This was highly unusual at the time in the United States, particularly within the religious orders.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 4, 2024
So rich and meaningful. Songs to always keep around and take to heart.
October 26, 2009
This the expanded and revised edition of the Selected Poems is still not a very thick volume, but it does include later Merton poems that reflect his growing opposition to the amoral capitalist and militaristic culture of the USA in the post World War II period.
Some great poems about faith are contrasted with "protest" poems against the dominant culture of the time, a culture that repressed people at home based on their skin color while attempting to spread "democracy" by dropping bombs on primitive people from B-52's. Merton writes a particularly chilling poem using the commandant of a Nazi Concentration Camp as the narrator.
June 3, 2012
I can’t recommend this collection highly enough. Merton, in addition to being a deep mystic, was a truly excellent contemporary poet. His poems feel entirely modern, yet touch on the eternal. While drawing on Catholic imagery, one can hear whispers of Eastern philosophy and insight in his words. Poems to reread and meditate deeply upon.
February 21, 2022
First official book of poetry I’ve ever read. I was drawn to the book on the local bookstore shelf because I had just learned of Thomas Merton from some other readings. There are some beautiful lines in here and a couple good poems but they are all a bit few and far between. A knowledge of Catholicism and monastic life may have helped in accessibility but overall it wasn’t clear what he was talking about most of the time.
May 19, 2022
When I was fourteen or fifteen, I opened e.e. cummings book of poetry, VIVA. New to poetry (but intrigued by what we were shown in 10th grade lit class), and on my own, I was lost. I read each poem, grasping a bit here and there but rarely, at least as I call, digesting a whole poem and connecting with it. Fortunately, cumming's poems were short and untangling them was similar to solving a crossword puzzle; crack the code and the meaning is all too clear; so one morning crossing a Southern State Parkway overpass, reading while walking, I broke one and started to laugh and read out loud and rejoice in the fact that I could not only read through but enjoy one of these poems. Most opened to me more quickly after the first.
I read these Merton poems with more experience. Still, many remained closed to me. Many simply because I couldn't understand the references. Take the first poem in the book: Lent in a Year of War
One of you is a major, made of cord and catskin,
But never dreams his eyes may come to life and thread
The needle-light of famine in a waterglass.
One of you is the paper Jack of Sprites
And will not cast his sentinel voice
Spiraling up the dark ears of the wind
Where the prisoner's yell is lost.
It goes on but already I have nothing to grasp but mood. Maybe that's necessary but already I am uncomfortable and I proceed with less confidence and greater distance.
This happens a lot, particularly in the first half of this book. It happens, as well, because his faith, or at least his religion is so often the reference point in these poems. I am here lost both because I don't understand the references and I don't relate to the message which, to me, seems more specific to his faith than universal. Take "Saint Jason" for example.
This is the night the false Saint Jason
Wakes tin fear from his cannibal sleep,
And drenches the edges of his eyes
With his tears' iron overflow.
....
"What do you want, in the windows of your wound
Where Judas' money shines
By daggers' waterlight?"
"--I want the martyr's eyes, as tight as shells,
In death's pretended sleep."
...
The feast of the false Saint Jason's first communion.
I am impressed with the imagery and the clarity but unmoved by the poem, the message. So it is with "Vespers" and "St. Agnes: A Responsory" I could work to crack their codes but I'm not fourteen on a poetry pilgrimage or struggling to prove deep understanding to my Intro to Poetry professor.
For whatever reason, I found the poems in the second half of the book more approachable. "The Guns Fort Knox," "Elegy for the Monastery Barn" "Dry Places" "Wisdom." I don't if these were poems were ordered chronologically but these later poems seem to leave behind the over-intellectualization of many - not all! - of the poems found earlier in the books. They don't seem to suffer the ponderous complexity, a complexity shared with many poets of the mid-20th century, that strain of modernist poetry evolving from Pound and Eliot. These poems don't work as hard, they invite you in. Take, "The Guns of Fort Knox."
Guns at the camp (I hear them suddenly)
Guns make the little houses jump I feel
Explosions in my feet, through boards.
Wars work under the floor. Wars
Dance in the foundations. Trees
Must also feel the guns they do not want
Even in their core.
As each charge bumps the shocked earth
They shudder from the root.
You feel this; you know this is both visceral and universal. He goes on...
Such ruins cannot
Keep the armies of the dead
From starting again.
They'll hear the guns tonight...
..................They'll rise
Through the stunned rocks, form
Regiments and do death's work once more.
Guns, I say, this is not
The right resurrection. All day long
You punch the doors of death to wake
A slain generation. Let them lie...
I loved this. And I loved any and all examples where I could step into Merton, even in the earlier works.
The Night Train
In the unreason of a rainy midnight
France blooms along the windows
Of my sleepy bathysphere,
And runs to seed in a luxuriance of curious lights.
....
Cities that stood, by day, as gay as lancers
Are lost, at night, like old men dying.
At a point where polished rails branch off forever
The steels lament, like crazy ladies.
You ride with him. You take this journey. That first line, "In the unreason of a rainy midnight," the whole line sets the train moving, the alliteration tumbles the line forward. In the second (presented) stanza, the second line dies the period as much as the first dances with the "gay lancers."
This writing is wonderful!
How about, "In Memory of the Spanish Poet Federico Garcia Lorca"?
Where the white bridge rears up its stamping arches
Proud as a colt across the clatter of the shallow river,
The sharp guitars
Have never forgotten your name.
What a touching and so apt tribute. I can picture a Lorca bow and a gracias.
Looking at this, I'd say that I am grateful to know this poet. While I don't follow or enjoy all of these works, I am moved by some and am struck by the immensity of talent, the song and the voice that Merton brings to the page.
I may, after all, spend a little more time cracking the code.
I read these Merton poems with more experience. Still, many remained closed to me. Many simply because I couldn't understand the references. Take the first poem in the book: Lent in a Year of War
One of you is a major, made of cord and catskin,
But never dreams his eyes may come to life and thread
The needle-light of famine in a waterglass.
One of you is the paper Jack of Sprites
And will not cast his sentinel voice
Spiraling up the dark ears of the wind
Where the prisoner's yell is lost.
It goes on but already I have nothing to grasp but mood. Maybe that's necessary but already I am uncomfortable and I proceed with less confidence and greater distance.
This happens a lot, particularly in the first half of this book. It happens, as well, because his faith, or at least his religion is so often the reference point in these poems. I am here lost both because I don't understand the references and I don't relate to the message which, to me, seems more specific to his faith than universal. Take "Saint Jason" for example.
This is the night the false Saint Jason
Wakes tin fear from his cannibal sleep,
And drenches the edges of his eyes
With his tears' iron overflow.
....
"What do you want, in the windows of your wound
Where Judas' money shines
By daggers' waterlight?"
"--I want the martyr's eyes, as tight as shells,
In death's pretended sleep."
...
The feast of the false Saint Jason's first communion.
I am impressed with the imagery and the clarity but unmoved by the poem, the message. So it is with "Vespers" and "St. Agnes: A Responsory" I could work to crack their codes but I'm not fourteen on a poetry pilgrimage or struggling to prove deep understanding to my Intro to Poetry professor.
For whatever reason, I found the poems in the second half of the book more approachable. "The Guns Fort Knox," "Elegy for the Monastery Barn" "Dry Places" "Wisdom." I don't if these were poems were ordered chronologically but these later poems seem to leave behind the over-intellectualization of many - not all! - of the poems found earlier in the books. They don't seem to suffer the ponderous complexity, a complexity shared with many poets of the mid-20th century, that strain of modernist poetry evolving from Pound and Eliot. These poems don't work as hard, they invite you in. Take, "The Guns of Fort Knox."
Guns at the camp (I hear them suddenly)
Guns make the little houses jump I feel
Explosions in my feet, through boards.
Wars work under the floor. Wars
Dance in the foundations. Trees
Must also feel the guns they do not want
Even in their core.
As each charge bumps the shocked earth
They shudder from the root.
You feel this; you know this is both visceral and universal. He goes on...
Such ruins cannot
Keep the armies of the dead
From starting again.
They'll hear the guns tonight...
..................They'll rise
Through the stunned rocks, form
Regiments and do death's work once more.
Guns, I say, this is not
The right resurrection. All day long
You punch the doors of death to wake
A slain generation. Let them lie...
I loved this. And I loved any and all examples where I could step into Merton, even in the earlier works.
The Night Train
In the unreason of a rainy midnight
France blooms along the windows
Of my sleepy bathysphere,
And runs to seed in a luxuriance of curious lights.
....
Cities that stood, by day, as gay as lancers
Are lost, at night, like old men dying.
At a point where polished rails branch off forever
The steels lament, like crazy ladies.
You ride with him. You take this journey. That first line, "In the unreason of a rainy midnight," the whole line sets the train moving, the alliteration tumbles the line forward. In the second (presented) stanza, the second line dies the period as much as the first dances with the "gay lancers."
This writing is wonderful!
How about, "In Memory of the Spanish Poet Federico Garcia Lorca"?
Where the white bridge rears up its stamping arches
Proud as a colt across the clatter of the shallow river,
The sharp guitars
Have never forgotten your name.
What a touching and so apt tribute. I can picture a Lorca bow and a gracias.
Looking at this, I'd say that I am grateful to know this poet. While I don't follow or enjoy all of these works, I am moved by some and am struck by the immensity of talent, the song and the voice that Merton brings to the page.
I may, after all, spend a little more time cracking the code.
May 3, 2014
Although sometimes a bit too dogmatic, Merton remains probably the best poet of faith in the 20th Century.
Read
August 10, 2025“When all the men of war are shot
And flags have fallen into the dust,
Your cross and mine shall tell men still
Christ died on each, for both of us.
For in the wreckage of your April Christ lies slain,
And Christ weeps in the ruins of my spring;
The money of Whose tears shall fall
Into your weak and friendless hand,
And buy you back to your own land:
The silence of Whose tears shall fall
Like bells upon your alien tomb,
Hear them and come: they call you home.”
“For My Brother: Reported Missing in Action, 1943”
And flags have fallen into the dust,
Your cross and mine shall tell men still
Christ died on each, for both of us.
For in the wreckage of your April Christ lies slain,
And Christ weeps in the ruins of my spring;
The money of Whose tears shall fall
Into your weak and friendless hand,
And buy you back to your own land:
The silence of Whose tears shall fall
Like bells upon your alien tomb,
Hear them and come: they call you home.”
“For My Brother: Reported Missing in Action, 1943”
February 5, 2019
Being a complete novice in the vast world of poetry, I feel like I don't have grounds to thoroughly review Merton. For some of his poems I was lost, floundering in his imagery and metaphor. Others were clear as diamond, piognant and morose. Merton's use of harsh adjectives juxtaposed next to soft nouns is beautiful.
December 27, 2019
With a few exceptions, Merton's poetry is weak, precious, free verse constructed of obscure allusions. Please note that there ARE exceptions; his memorial to his brother is touching.
Merton’s Seven-Story Mountain, in strong contrast, is brilliant but he seems to have lost his way after that, confusing ideological fashions and his own erratic moods for some sort of vague quest from truth.
Merton’s Seven-Story Mountain, in strong contrast, is brilliant but he seems to have lost his way after that, confusing ideological fashions and his own erratic moods for some sort of vague quest from truth.
November 6, 2018
This was my first time reading Merton at any length, and I want as into it as I thought I would be. Some poems were truly extraordinary, but I found most of them to be somewhat staid and lacking in spark.
July 26, 2022
Perhaps too dated in terms of style and content. I found the many poems about religious life made me bored.
Despite that I love the flow of the poems, the cadence
particularly the poem The Sowing of Meanings
Despite that I love the flow of the poems, the cadence
particularly the poem The Sowing of Meanings
November 17, 2022
Many of the poems were opaque and inscrutable to me, which might as well be my own lack of experience as a reader, but there were a few gems too and they will definitely stick with me. I guess I find Merton more compelling in prose.
September 25, 2020
3.5! Thomas Merton’s poetry is very good only when very good
October 22, 2020
I don't feel qualified to review this book of poetry, because I am such a novice with poetry in general. I chose to read it to perhaps gain some inspiration, and that did happen. I can't say I understood all of Merton's images, but there were some wonderful, modern verses which amused me.
January 30, 2021
Many of merton’s poems remain out of reach for me. His mystical writing is intensely thought provoking, and requires multiple read throughs (at least for me). I will return to this one.
March 26, 2022
Not my favorite Merton book. Good thing he didn’t stick with poetry. The world would have missed out on what he was truly gifted writing.
May 24, 2022
i love this man's writings, but couldn't really get these poems, save a handful.
the best part was the included essay Poetry and Contemplation.
the best part was the included essay Poetry and Contemplation.
August 8, 2022
Since the 70s, I have read this book over and over, and I have the original copy I bought in the last 60s. Faith is Art for Merton and as your life changes new meaning comes from the poems
October 1, 2023
I respect Thomas Merton, having read several volumes of his work. Unfortunately, this one didn't "do it" for me.
April 13, 2016
Good insights and poetic expression of life and faith.
December 5, 2014
Well then, he really liked Duns Scotus.
February 15, 2015
"Now the lone world is streaky as a wall of marble with veins of clear and frozen snow"
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews