The First Four Books of Poems

This edition includes former United States Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin's four acclaimed early works: A Mask for Janus, The Dancing Bears, Green with Beasts, and The Drunk in the Furnace. In choosing Merwin's first book for the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1952, W.H. Auden noted that Merwin had a “gift for myth." This ability marked his poetry throughout his long and distinguished career, and The First Four Books of Poems provides a map to a deeper understanding of the stylistic and intellectual evolution of a major poet.