Watch Fire

Merrill has an unusual ability to place himself in the midst of things, describe the immediate scene, and then reach through the scene to explore our place within it. Watch Fire, which also includes selections from his first two books, Workbook and Fever & Tides, allows one to monitor these restless investigations (restless because our own inability to connect with any given moment is so apparent). Thematically, both Frost and Galway Kinnell are echoed here, though Merrill's linguistic sensibility, with its imaginative leaps bordering on surrealism, is fraught with an exigency all its own. His range in form and subject matter is enormous and, as one moves from the early, highly lyrical poems of Workbook to the new selection of tougher, more chiselled poems in Luck, one is struck not just by the growth of Merrill's imagination but also by his tireless search for a language that captures the vitality of experience. (Nov.)