Selected Translations

Description

This collection of W.S. Merwin's translations is a deeply worthy book, beautifully produced, and meant to last as a physical object and cultural offering.--World Literature Today

None surpass him. This Selected Translations is amazing in scope, mastery, themes, artistry, imagination: a testimony to a lifetime of consequential work.--Three Percent

An absorbing experience that resonates with a multitude of cultural viewpoints and traditions, spanning centuries of human history. An astonishing tour de force.--Midwest Book Review

Selected Translations is the lifework from one of America's greatest poets and translators. Dedicated to the art of translation since his undergraduate years at Princeton, W.S. Merwin achieved an unmatched oeurve of translated poems from every corner of the earth, from dozens of languages. This massive achievement is an essential volume for every library, public and private.

Basho's Tomb at Konpuku-ji Temple
Yosa Buson

I will die too
let me be a dry grass flower
here by the monument

In the wild winter wind
the voice of the water is torn
falling across the rocks

I bury the charcoal embers
in the ashes
my hut is covered with snow

I wear this hood
rather than look as though
I belonged to the drifting world

W.S. Merwin won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, most recently for The Shadow of Sirius, and the National Book Award for Migration: New and Selected Poems. Author and translator of over fifty books, Mr. Merwin lives in Hawaii and France.