The Second Four Books of Poems: The Moving Target / The Lice / The Carrier of Ladders / Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment

by W.S. Merwin

W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He worked as a tutor in France, Portugal, and Majorca, and has translated from French, Spanish, Latin and Portugese. He has published more than a dozen volumes of orignal poetry and several volumes of prose. Mr. Merwin has been awarded the Tanning Prize, the Pulitzer and Bollingen prizes, the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Pen Translation Prize, and many other honors. He lives in Haiku, Hawaii.

W.S. Merwin's Second Four Books of Poems includes some of the most startlingly original and influential poetry of the second half of this century, a poetry that has moved, as Richard Howard has written, "from preterition to presence to prophecy."

Other books by M.S. Merwin available from Consortium:
East Window (Copper Canyon Press), 1-55659-091-1
The First Four Books of Poems (Copper Canyon Press), 1-55659-139-X
Flower & Hand (Copper Canyon Press), 1-55659-119-5

Genres: Poetry

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

William 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.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

After finishing the first two books (of the "second four"), I'm going to take a break from Merwin. There are times when his language play and imagery speak to me, but mostly I feel left behind. An interesting reference to him in one of Ted Hughes's letters, which I'm currently reading. I'll come back to Merwin, but need a change in my morning poetry reading...

Well, three years later I came back to it, with much the same results. I'm going to return to his later volume, The Shadow of Sirius, to see if that collection still resonates a bit better for me...

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiercely intelligent, maybe a little too clever at times in his early works, but as he evolves, W.S. Merwin finds liminal spaces in spiritual zones of proximal development. The ideas are just there, just beyond the fence of words and I love him for that. This is the second of two collections that take up his first 8 books and by reading them in succession you get a great emotional arc. From his early poetic games to later mature works that paint profound and rich portraits of Merwin's mindscape. Take one of my favorites:

TO THE RAIN

You reach me out of the age of the air
clear
falling toward me
each one new
if any of you has a name
it is unknown

but waited for you here
that long
for you to fall through it knowing nothing

hem of the garment
do not wait
until I can love all that I am to know
for maybe that will never be

touch me this time
let me love what I cannot know
as the man born blind may love color
until all that he loves
fills him with color

The way he uses pacing and grammar and the evocative image of a person standing amid rain. Those lines keep coming back to me hem of the garment/do not wait/until I can love all that I am to know. One of my many cherished fragments in a generous collection of work. Though in my opinion Merwin blasts off with The Carrier of Ladders, his work in The Lice and The Moving Target are formidable, briming with their own gems in a style he was continually turning over and examining.

Like April, a poem in dialogue with T.S. Eliot (first initials name club bestie). You can see the tension between the heady Merwin who's instinct in the past had been to write using very clever games and the emotionally savage Merwin who would come later on, the one who kept close to the reader:

APRIL

When we have gone the stone will stop singing

April April
Sinks through the sand of names

Days to come
With no stars hidden in them

You that can wait being there

You that lose nothing
Know nothing

That dialogue with other works makes up the bulk of The Moving Target but then there are little "throwaways" that you could miss. Little moments of brilliance shining through the more intensely literary works such as Lemuel's Blessing, which comes with an epigraph from Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno. Lemuel's Blessing surely requires attention but if I'm honest I just didn't find those Important Poems as interesting as the shorter jabs interspersed:

SEPARATION

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Maybe I just like it when he wrote about color. His controlling images certainly checked his early inclinations to the philosophical.

So, yes, I loved spending time with this volume, it is miles ahead of his first four books of poems though it continues a line of artistic development that really doesn't stop. I wish I could continue reading the rest of his books in collections 4 at a time but, as of this review, this is where publishers stopped bundling. I highly recommend this collection over the first to anyone but completists. There is a lot here, more than enough for casual readers, and inspiring enough to urge exploring more of Merwin's oeuvre.

[Ashley Bostrom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book of poetry years ago because of my love for W.S. Merwin's poem Separation (from The Moving Target):

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

And while this is still one of my favorite poems, on a whole, my taste in poetry has transformed into poems that I can more immediately relate to. That said, while this collection was a 3 for me, some of the poems were still 5s:

Noah's Raven (The Moving Target)
The Continuo (The Moving Target)
For a Coming Extinction (The Lice)
The Judgement of Paris (The Carrier of Ladders)
The Port (The Carrier of Ladders)
Memory of Spring (The Carrier of Ladders)
The Search (Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment)

[Zayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not the biggest poetry fan, but I took this poetry course, and I have written several poems myself, so I understand from an insiders perspective on how hard it is to get anything published and be successful in that, let alone if it's poetry, but W.S. Merwin manages to strike us with his poems themselves and without embedding himself into them so easily. Unlike where some other poets like Silvia Plath and Anne Sexton, who Merwin knew personally, who wrote in a more autobiographical way with their poetry, he doesn't do that in his. I find that very intriguing in his works, that he manages to separate the poet from the poetry. He allows his poetry to have a breath on its own.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took me almost a year to read. It's...a lot. There were some lines that struck me hard, and a few full poems that made me cry, but overall it felt elusive and just out of my understanding.

Pilate made me sob, inexplicably.

My copy of the book bristles with flags, all four volumes about evenly marked. I can see how his work would be a life-long study, and while it was often a chore to read some of them, I'm glad I experienced it.

[WmkPhil · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are gems, dark & beautiful, surreal & haunting.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

W.S. Merwin is one of my favorite poets. My favorite poem is “A Door.”

[Geoff Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite collections from one of my favorite poets. I return to this volume often, flipping to random pages and knowing that wherever I land will be a good place.

[Padraic · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1972, my AP English teacher/funeral parlor director had us focus on a single modern poet apiece for a term project. The straw I drew read W.S. Merwin, about whom I know nothing.

I've been reading Merwin now for 36 years, drawn by his incredible voice, drawn too (let's be honest) by the fact that he passed several unhappy years in my hometown in the 1940s. The Moving Target and The Lice were the two volumes I focused on (i.e. the two volumes held by the Scranton Public Library at the time), and so this compilation is a time trip for me.

But unlike a lot of "local" poets, Merwin had The Voice - something spooky and allusive, like someone not quite right whispering over your shoulder in the dark of a dream - you should be scared shitless, but you want to listen too, because...well, it's so beautiful.

Merwin now lives in Hawaii. He's happy I hear. And Scranton is surviving quite well without him, thank you very much...it has quite enough spooky, elusive voices speaking to it already.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

W.S. Merwin has become one of my favorite poets, although his last book of poems didn't appeal to me the same way the other three books in the anthology did. In his later poems, he forwent all form and punctuation, leading to, to me, poetry that was very hard to follow and relate to. It was hard to get much of an emotional reaction to it.

That being said, I adore most of his poetry. I desperately want to read all of his other books of poetry. Very badly.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of this was not my preferred sort of poetry, but there were a dozen or so that I did dig. That's a dozen out of a hundred and fifty or so. The rest are a little out there for me, with lots of references to pain and stones and the rain.

[Licia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the images and all they evoke from within me. This book is wonderful as it covers his poetry from 1963-1973. I was writing a story and fell upon one of his poems and it gave depth and direction to my writing. I'm going to try that again!

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

W.S. Merwin is my favorite American poet, and this collection includes his finest work.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeing this man read in 1999 changed my perspective on what poetry should sound like coming out of a persons vocal chords.

[Marguerite · Rating 5 out of 5]

W.S. Merwin is the poet's poet, daring to take the language beyond its limits.

[Claire Casso · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two books are definitely stronger than the latter two. Still, Merwin remains one of my favorite poets.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

how have i never read this?

[Yogi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merwin and Oliver are my two favorite poets. The spaciousness and link to nature fill me with awe and reverence.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

His words speak to my soul. Simple language, yes, but they elicit very deep responses.

[T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

/ First read January 2006.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant progression throughout.