Books
Mr. Merwin has written over 40 books of poetry, essays, and translations. His most recent collection, The Shadow of Sirius, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Migration: New & Selected Poems won the 2005 National Book Award. If you are new to Merwin’s poetry and writing, these two books are extraordinary beginnings.
To Purchase
To purchase any of these books, please visit Copper Canyon Press or your favorite local bookstore or online retailer, such as Iconoclast Books. A full list of titles is below.
POETRY
A Mask for Janus (also see below), Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1952.
The Dancing Bears (also see below), Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1954.
Green with Beasts (also see below), Knopf (New York, NY), 1956.
The Drunk in the Furnace (also see below), Macmillan (New York, NY), 1960.
(Editor) West Wind: Supplement of American Poetry, Poetry Book Society (London, England), 1961.
The Moving Target, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1963.
Collected Poems, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1966.
The Lice, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1969.
Animae, Kayak (San Francisco, CA), 1969.
The Miner’s Pale Children (prose), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1970, reprinted, Holt (New York, NY), 1994.
The Carrier of Ladders, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1970.
(With A.D. Moore) Signs, Stone Wall Press (Iowa City, IA), 1970.
Asian Figures, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1973.
Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1973.
The First Four Books of Poems (contains A Mask for Janus, The Dancing Bears, Green with Beasts, and The Drunk in the Furnace), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1975.
The Compass Flower, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1977.
Houses and Travellers (prose), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1977, reprinted, Holt (New York, NY), 1994.
Feathers from the Hill, Windhover (Iowa City, IA), 1978.
Finding the Islands, North Point Press (San Francisco, CA), 1982.
Unframed Originals: Recollections (prose), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1982.
Opening the Hand, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1983.
The Rain in the Trees: Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1988.
Selected Poems, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1988.
The Lost Upland (prose), Knopf (New York, NY), 1992.
Travels: Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.
The Vixen: Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1996.
(Compiler) Lament for the Makers: A Memorial Anthology, Counterpoint (Washington, DC), 1996.
Flower and Hand: Poems, 1977-1983, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 1996.
The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative (prose), Knopf (New York, NY), 1998.
East Window: The Asian Poems, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 1998.
The River Sound: Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.
The Pupil, Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.
The Mays of Ventadorn (prose, National Geographic Direction Series), National Geographic (Washington, DC), 2002.
The Ends of the Earth (essays), Shoemaker & Hoard (Washington, DC), 2004.
Migration: New and Selected Poems, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2005.
Present Company, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2005.
The Shadow of Sirius, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2008.
BOOKS
Brunner, Edward J., Poetry As Labor and Privilege: The Writings of W.S. Merwin, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1991.
Christhilf, Mark, W.S. Merwin the Mythmaker, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO), 1986.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 5, 1976, Volume 8, 1978, Volume 13, 1980, Volume 18, 1981.
Contemporary Poets, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.
Davis, Cheri, W.S. Merwin, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1981.
Dickey, James, Babel to Byzantium, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1968.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 5: American Poets since World War II, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1980.
Hix, H. L., Understanding W.S. Merwin, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 1997.
Hoeppner, Edward Haworth, Echoes and Moving Fields: Structure and Subjectivity in the Poetry of W.S. Merwin and John Ashbery, Associated University Presses (Cranberry, NJ), 1994.
Howard, Richard, Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States since 1950, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1969.
Hungerford, Edward, Poets in Progress, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1962.
Nelson, Cary, and Ed Folsom, editors, W.S. Merwin: Essays on the Poetry, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1987.
Poetry for Students, Volume 5, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.
Rexroth, Kenneth, With Eye and Ear, Herder (New York, NY), 1970.
Rexroth, Kenneth, American Poetry in the Twentieth Century, Herder (New York, NY), 1971.
Rosenthal, M. L., The Modern Poets: A Critical Introduction, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1960.
Shaw, Robert B., editor, American Poetry since 1960: Some Critical Perspectives, Dufour (Chester Springs, PA), 1974.
Stepanchev, Stephen, American
A reading of the poem, “Yesterday,” by W.S. Merwin.