Garden Time

Even with more than 20 books of poetry to his name, Merwin (The Moon Before Morning) has more to say. He makes much of the cycles of nature and the manner in which things repeat: “the rocks are singing/ under you out of the unending silence/ where the world goes on beginning.” There is a melancholy that suffuses these poems, and because the book reads almost as a kind of retrospective exhibit, there is little innovation here to truly excite the reader. Merwin himself seems to recognize this, writing “The question itself has not changed/ but only the depths of memory/ through which it rises.” He also contemplates the potential for defiance through language as well as the irony that “words have been used for/ so many things/ how can they speak now.” Readers may expect a little more from a former U.S. poet laureate who has won every major honor in his field. There is plenty of subtle, quiet poetry within this fine book’s pages, but it never quite reaches the excellence of which Merwin is capable. (Sept.)