The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative of 19th-century Hawaii - Hardcover

Merwin, W.S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375401482 ISBN 13: 9780375401480

Publisher: Knopf, 1998

Synopsis

From a major American poet--a thrilling story, in verse, of nineteenth-century Hawaii. The story of an attempt by the government to seize and constrain possible victims of leprosy and the determination of one small family not to be taken. A tale of the perils and glories of their flight into the wilds of the island of Kauai, pursued by a gunboat full of soldiers.
A brilliant capturing--inspired by the poet's respect for the people of these islands--of their life, their history, the gods and goddesses of their mythic past. A somber revelation of the wrecking of their culture through the exploitative incursions of Europeans and Americans. An epic narrative that enthralls with the grandeur of its language and of its vision.

About this title

About the Author

W. S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in Union City, New Jersey, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 1949 to 1951 he worked as a tutor in France, Portugal, and Majorca. He has since lived in many parts of the world, most recently on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. His many books of poems, prose, and translations are listed at the beginning of this volume. He has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (of which he is now a Chancellor), the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and the Bollingen Prize in Poetry; most recently he has received the Governor's Award for Literature of the state of Hawaii, the Tanning Prize for mastery in the art of poetry, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

From the Back Cover

"A thrilling historical narrative--taut and skillful and full of lost values. Merwin creates a powerful poetic narrative with great intimacy and humanity."
Michael Ondaatje

"There is no one word for The Folding Cliffs. None of the obvious ones--poem, epic, fiction, tragedy, history, celebration, prayer--can begin to describe what is simply a masterpiece. Maybe the word is 'gift,' because the greatest art--and Merwin's work is certainly this--is like the best gift, unexpected, surprising, and, once considered, profoundly indispensable."
Jane Kramer

Reviews

Since distinguished poet and translator Merwin (The Lice; The Vixen) moved to Maui almost two decades ago, Hawaiian flora, fauna and history have pervaded his work. His sprawling new novel-in-verse (based on historical facts) unfolds a complicated, suspenseful, true story of natives, colonials, rebels and leprosy in 19th-century Kaua'i, spread over seven chapters of 40 one-page sections. Merwin's cast includes his native Hawaiian heroes, Ko'olau and his wife (later widow), Pi'ilani; their relatives (a crew that's hard to sort out); the authoritative and admirable Judge Kauai; an iconoclastic cleric, George Rowell; Father Valdemar Knudsen, Ko'olau's employer; and a complement of ill-meaning missionaries and colonialists. The plot, when it gets underway, involves resistance to the cruel government policy of forcibly segregrating Hawaiians diagnosed with leprosy. Stricken with "the separating sickness," Ko'olau, Pi'ilani and their son join an Edenic, illegal settlement of lepers in a remote valley. Into Ko'olau's and Pi'ilani's sad adventures, Merwin splices earlier Hawaiian history and legend, from creation myths to the overthrow of the last native rulers. Readers must acclimate themselves to the fluently ongoing, unpunctuated lines and extended sentences in which Merwin casts all his verse. But after a dozen pages, the six- and seven-beat lines seem surprisingly flexible and appropriate. The fast-moving chapters try hard and well to combine the Homeric grandeur of orally transmitted epics, ecological and historical information ("the landed chiefs' sole remaining wealth was the land/ which no one but they could own") and the simpler pleasures of a suspenseful plot. The rapt attention typical of Merwin's short poems mixes comfortably here with the pathos and characterization of a contemporary realist novel: "she stopped and looked back at the valley she had left/ it looked new and shining in an age that never changed/ and farther away than she had ever seen it."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A deep sense of place infuses Merwin's sensual poetry, and it, too, is the impetus behind this remarkably dramatic book-length poem. Merwin has rekindled a long-dormant form to present a fictionalized yet fact-based tale of the tragic history of Hawaii, his home, a wondrous scattering of islands calamitously vulnerable to violation. In the opening scenes, Merwin conjures the glistening web of the pristine Hawaiian landscape, naming trees and birds, stones and water, flowers and clouds. His long, lovely lines roll in and out like ocean waves as he slowly adds human beings to the scene and introduces his main characters, Pi'ilani and Ko'olau, who marry and have a son and then witness the diabolical conquest of their beloved island by strange men in huge boats. The men are full of lust and bring iron, cattle, and disease. As Merwin recounts the horrific consequences of their invasion, particularly their treatment of lepers as criminals, his language turns hard, and his lines snap and slash like the lashes of a whip, incising into our collective conscience the painful truth about a place we like to think of as paradise. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375401482
• ISBN 13: 9780375401480
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 331