美国国家公共电台 NPR Book Review: 'Garden Time,' W.S. Merwin

（单词翻译）

Book Review: 'Garden Time,' W.S. Merwin

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0001:56repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: 

Poet W.S. Merwin is nearly 90. His eyesight is failing, and he can't see well enough to write. He dictated² many of the poems for his new collection "Garden Time" to his wife, and our poetry reviewer Tess Taylor says the result is spectacular.

TESS TAYLOR, BYLINE³: Even writing one good book of poems is tricky⁴, let alone sustaining a career that lasts over six decades, all of which is to say I'd be delighted with "Garden Time" anyway. But having such a fine book of poetry come to us now from such a voice as Merwin's is a rare and particular gift.

Gardens or time are hardly new to lyric⁵ poetry. In fact, they might be its most familiar ingredients. Merwin puts these classics to fresh use. Suspending a morning, holding up its facets⁶, Merwin asks how time inhabits us and we inhabit time. The poems give the effect of watching a great beam of light move over a stained glass window. They are often written as unpunctuated sentences that seem still glinting, just lifted out of the stream.

I'm especially drawn⁷ to Merwin's gentle discourse⁸ with his own mortality, as in the poem called "Not Early Or Late," where he asks, (reading) is it I that have come to this age, or is it the age that has come to me? Which one has brought along all these silent images on their shadowy river?

I also admire the poem called "The Morning," where Merwin addresses the day itself, asking, (reading) would I love it this way if I were somewhere else or if I were younger for the first time or if these very birds were not singing? Merwin, as if speaking to his own end, continues on. (Reading) Red torment⁹ of body or gray void of grief, would I love it this way if I knew that I would remember anything that is here now, anything, anything?

MCEVERS: The poetry collection is "Garden Time" by W.S. Merwin. Tess Taylor had our review. Her most recent book is "Work And Days."