The pressmark of Copper Canyon Press.The Chinese character for poetry. Comprised of two parts: word and temple.
To celebrate the event Book Patrol has asked each of the younger poets to share a Merwin experience; whether it be his influence, a favorite poem or a first encounter, we left it pretty open.
For the next four days we will feature one of their responses.
If your in the region: Tickets are $15, $10 for students. For $100 donation you get to hang out with everybody before the reading. They will all be signing books after the reading and Cooper Canyon has produced a letterpress broadside printed by Urban Editions in honor of the event which will also be available.
Must listen: KUOW’s Weekday will have Merwin on for an hour-long interview with call-ins on the morning of the 4th.
For now, we leave you with ‘Far Along in the Story,’ a poem by W.S. Merwin
The boy walked on with a flock of cranes
following him calling as they came
from the horizon behind him
sometimes he thought he could recognize
a voice in all that calling but he
could not hear what they were calling
and when he looked back he could not tell
one of them from another in their
rising and falling but he went on
trying to remember something in
their calls until he stumbled and came
to himself with the day before him
wide open and the stones of the path
lying still and each tree in its own leaves
the cranes were gone from the sky and at
that moment he remembered who he was
only he had forgotten his name
W.S. Merwin books at Copper Canyon.
Jay Parini’s piece in the Guardian, Why W.S. Merwin deserves his second Pulitzer prize, April, 2009.