Ted Merwin Knihy

A volume of poems concerned with intimacy and wholeness, and with history and how the world endures it—f rom the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and “one of the greatest poets of our age … the Thoreau of our era” (Edward Hirsch).A literary event—a new volume of poems by one of the masters of modern poetry— The Rain in the Trees is W. S. Merwin's first book since the publication of his Opening the Hand.Almost no other poet of our time has been able to voice in so subtle a fashion such a profound series of comments on the passing of history over the contemporary scene. To do this, he seems to have reinvented the poem—so that the experience of reading Merwin is unlike the reading of any other poetry. In such famous books as The Lice, The Moving Target and (most recently) Opening the Hand, he has produced a body of work of great profundity and power made from the simplest and most beautiful poetic speech.Merwin can now rightfully be called a master, and this book shows in every way why this is the case.

A remarkable volume of poems about the people, countryside, and creatures of southwest France—f rom the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and “one of the greatest poets of our age … the Thoreau of our era” (Edward Hirsch).“One of the most distinctive and original voices in American poetry" ( The New Yorker ) and winner of the Marshall, Bollingen, Pulitzer, and other important prizes for mastery of his art delivers a major collection.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and “one of the greatest poets of our age … the Thoreau of our era” (Edward Hirsch) delivers “one of the most beautiful and moving collections of poetry of his career … a book of deep historical resonance and luminous poetic grace” ( Los Angeles Times Book Review ).  “With each new book we have been reminded why, for forty years, he has remained a pivotal figure in the literary life of this country … [he] continues to earn his place as one of our most influential and compelling contemporary poets.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review

W.S. Merwin was arguably the most influential American poet of the last half- century. At 82, Merwin produced 'his best book in a decade - and one of the best outright' (Publishers Weekly), and a collection which has won him his second Pulitzer Prize in the US and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in the UK.

Spain has produced two books that changed world literature: Don Quixote and Lazarillo de Tormes, the first picaresque novel ever written and the inspired precursor to works as various as Vanity Fair and Huckleberry Finn. Banned by the Spanish Inquisition after publication in 1554, Lazarillo was soon translated throughout Europe, where it was widely copied. The book is a favorite to this day for its vigorous colloquial style and the earthy realism with which it exposes human hypocrisy. The bastard son of a prostitute, Lazarillo goes to work for a blind beggar, who beats and starves him, while teaching him some very useful dirty tricks. The boy then drifts in and out of the service of a succession of masters, each vividly sketched and together revealing the corrupt world of imperial Spain. Its miseries are made all the more apparent by the candor and surprising good cheer with which young Lazarillo recounts his ever more curious fate. This version of Lazarillo, by the prizewinning poet and translator W.S. Merwin, brings out the wonderful vitality and humor of this universal masterwork.