Description
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. W. S. Merwin is a defining writer for our age, a poet who, over the course of sixty years and more than forty books, has created a body of work of enormous range, ambition, and complexity. He has served as the United States Poet Laureate and is the recipient of almost every major American award for poetry, including the 2005 National Book Award and two Pulitzer Prizes, first in 1971 and again in 2009. In this volume, for the first time, fifteen poets and critics gather to discuss the last quarter century of his work, beginning with The Rain in the Trees, a collection of poems that marks a turning point in Merwin's career. At times personal and at times scholarly, these essays place the poet's recent work in the context of a lifetime of writing, and help us to understand how this seminal literary figure fits into the ongoing conversation of American poetry.
Includes a preface by editors Jonathan Weinert and Kevin Prufer, a transcript of an interview with W. S. Merwin, and essays by David Caplan, Steven Cramer, Debra Kang Dean, Forrest Gander, Mark Halliday, Jerry Harp, H. L. Hix, Mark Irwin, Sarah Kennedy, Eric Pankey, Lisa Russ Spaar, Michael Theune, Jeanie Thompson and Matthew Zapruder.
Author Bio
Jonathan Weinert is the author of IN THE MODE OF DISAPPEARANCE (Nightboat Books, 2008), winner of the 2006 Nightboat Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His poems appear in numerous literary journals, including The Kenyon Review, American Letters and Commentary, and Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing.
Kevin Prufer is the author of five poetry collections, the most recent of which are In a Beautiful Country (Four Way Books, 2011) and National Anthem (Four Way Books, 2008), named one of the five best poetry collections of the year by Publishers Weekly. The editor of numerous volumes, he is Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.
Author City: USA