Enchanting and careful, the poems here are explorations of memory, of nature, and of identity as it might perhaps be understood while it is still being formed, and experienced. Merwin's poems are lyrical and rhythmic, and those that speak with a strain of the blues are some of the strongest here, ringing with the movement of rivers and wind. The three longer narrative poems are also stand-outs--particularly "Suite in the Key of Forgetting", which I found myself returning to again and again, and which I'll surely return to in the future.

Calm as the poems are, the collection still floats along with an inner tension, and I'd recommend it to any poetry lover without hesitation. ( )

W.S. Merwin probably writes his personal diary in verse. The poems in this volume have a steady flow as if he were sitting in a patio poking at overgrown weeds with the tip of his shoe while musing without particular intensity on time and the way sounds are with us and then gone. Most of us, though, eventually tire of a steady murmur, and start listening for brighter sounds. There are few of these in this opus. The long poem "Testimony" soon palls with its earnestness. It has none of the roguishness of Villon's poem, which he references. I wish someone had been brave enough to put a blue pencil to it before it was published, for there are some poignant lines and pretty turns here and there.