The Shadow of Sirius

There's a solidity and weight to Merwin's latest collection, a deliberateness, a sure-footed arrangement of words that can only come from time. That this precision is brought to bear against that very element that has enabled its existence, makes for a calmly intense volume that ponders with the experience of a lifetime, what it means to be alive.Time loops, reverses and engages in the impossible throughout these poems; its inexorable forward motion, year on year, subject to the ebb and flow of memory:I will be asleep and I willwake up far awaywe are going southwhere I know that my fatheris going to diebut I will grow up before he does thatMemory plays tricks and condenses time so that the past flattens and long-gone events return with the uncanny sense of having occurred only moments ago. Memory is notoriously unreliable. Memory haunts this volume; the eponymous "shadow" perhaps, cast by a life, admitted: "I have only what I remember".The Shadow of Sirius is divided into 3 unequal parts. The first dealing more overtly with the past, where Merwin's travelling through distant times becomes our present. The second, shorter section, is dedicated to his dogs (the origins of "Sirius"?) and explores the spaces that death leaves in life. The final, longest part of the collection is thematically eclectic, abstract in nature, where time and memory seem to bring an extra depth and quality of feeling to the paintings on a wall, a landscape, a month of the year.Merwin's poetry has condensed into free verse, not only free from formal constraints, but language freed from punctuation. Such unfettered poems in any lesser poet might cause the reader problems, but his language has outgrown conventions, and offers meaning we read as we do the rhythm of waves, or the twinkling of a star. Despite the chaos this might suggest, there is a diamond hardness to the placement of words; language made precise over a lifetime of experimentation.It is impossible to try and capture the essence of this volume of poetry in a review, when what it speaks of is something that we will all come to know through the process of living. It feels like a gift from someone who, having surveyed our whole life, has kindly noted for us its most intense pleasures and pains. Honest, simple and moving, this is a collection to grow old with, for these poems "have come the whole way/they have been there"Merwin received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize (his second!) for The Shadow of Sirius, and was appointed US Poet Laureate earlier this year (2010). He is currently working on a new collection...

Nothing to dislike. Having read "The Essential W S Merwin and listened to old recordings of him reading, I wanted to have the full collection "The Shadow of Sirius". Every page is a gift from this wonderful poet; it is a volume I will keep by me rather than on the book shelf. His poetry responds to repeated reading; his heart and mind were, and remain in his writing, so relevant for today's world. Thank you William.

I came away from this collection with mixed feelings. The themes and ideas in the poems were compelling and sensitively explored, however it also emphased for me the value of punctuation... in quite a few places the poems jarred and I lost the flow in my attempt to make sense of the structure.

very good