The Ends of the Earth: Essays - Softcover

Merwin, W. S.

3.59

22 ratings by Goodreads

9781593760687: The Ends of the Earth: Essays

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159376068X ISBN 13: 9781593760687

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2005

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W. S. Merwin is widely acknowledged as one of the finest living poets in English. Less well known is the power and range of his work in prose. For his first new prose collection in more than ten years, The Ends of the Earth, Merwin has gathered eight essays that show the breadth of his imagination and sympathy. A memoir of George Kirstein, publisher of "The Nation," stands alongside one of Sydney Parkinson, explorer, naturalist and artist on Captain James Cook’s Endeavour. A wonderful portrait of the French explorer of Hawai’i, Jean-Francois Galaup de La Perouse is followed by a visit to the Neanderthal skeleton of Boffia Bonneval. There are treks through the Hawaiian forests, to the Holy Mountain of Athos, and with the butterflies in Mexico. For this magical and wondrous journey we have as our guide the excited and concise poet-naturalist, writing at the top of his form.

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About the Author:

W. S. Merwin is the author of many highly regarded books of poetry and prose, for which he has received the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Award, and numerous other awards. He lives in Hawaii.

From Publishers Weekly:

This collection by the distinguished poet initially presents a challenge. The opening essay is a memoir of George Kirstein, longtime publisher of the Nation and for even longer a friend of Merwin's. But Kirstein does not come sharply into focus until Merwin shifts from an almost journalistic account of Kirstein's personal history to recounting his firsthand experiences and observations of his friend. The rest of the collection has a very different tone and emphasis. The essay "Reflections of a Mountain" takes the reader on a journey that begins in Venice with "the feeling of stepping-stones sinking under the feet they help to cross" and then moves to the Holy Mountain, with its monasteries and churches, of Athos, which (depending on whom you ask) may or may not be part of Greece. Merwin brings a graceful, unhurried style to his travels through Athos and evokes a landscape imbued with history, meaning, and natural and manmade beauty. This piece is complemented by later essays on the lives and explorations of Sydney Parkinson, the naturalist and artist who sailed with Capt. James Cook, and the travels and travails of the 18th-century French naval officer and explorer Fran�ois Galaup de La Perouse. The Parkinson essay, like two shorter pieces about the plight of the monarch butterfly, occasionally suffers from an academic tone, and the La Perouse piece goes on a little longer than it needs to, but for the most part, these travelers and the natural world that enthralled them make fascinating subjects in Merwin's skillful hands.
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