To celebrate the fact that W.S. Merwin is the winner of the 2010 Kenyon Review Award for literary achievement, KR will host an online discussion of his latest book, The Shadow of Sirius, here on the blog. There will be some new faces while we give the regular bloggers a breather. (You may see those regulars bring some thoughts on Merwin, too.)
What does this mean? This means get your copy of Sirius today, before the book has to go back for another printing!
Expect 500 feelings and a whole lot of open-hearted big thinking from these four poets who will breathe life into our collective reading of The Shadow of Sirius and Merwin’s place in contemporary poetics. His deceptively simple and open lines belie a deeper disembodiment–absent of punctuation, they tune to something higher than what one feels a body is built to help us never forget: the passing of time. Grab your copy and be sure to follow along. And if reading poetry is new or daunting for you, let Merwin and this month be your way in.
Darcie Dennigan is the author of Corinna, A-Maying the Apocalypse, from Fordham University Press. She is a past recipient of the Discovery/The Nation prize and writes occasionally for TheRumpus.net. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Andrew Grace is the author of A Belonging Field, from Salt Publishing, and Shadeland, winner of the 2008 OSU Press/The Journal prize. He is also the author of Sancta, forthcoming from Ahsahta Press in 2012. He was recently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Caryl Pagel is the author of the chapbook Visions, Crisis Apparitions, & Other Exceptional Experiences, from Factory Hollow Press. She works for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she edits Rescue Press.
Zach Savich is the author of Full Catastrophe Living, winner of the 2008 Iowa Poetry Prize and Annulments, from the University of Colorado Press. He is also the author of The Firestorm, forthcoming from Cleveland State University Press, and The Man Who Lost His Head, a chapbook forthcoming from Omnidawn. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.