Watch Fire [Paperback]

Christopher Merrill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1995

This is a collection including poems from Christopher Merrill's first two books as well as later poems. It concludes with his exquisite long poem "Luck", which begins "For those not born to wealth or royalty, / Luck's a language learned by fits and starts". Merrill treats the fickleness of fate - and humanity's attempts to define fate - with both poignancy and humour. His imagery enters the mind like a new dialect, not with trite or cliched metaphors, but startling and uncommon word pictures that heighten the mood as well as the senses, such as in "The Rope": "Your eyes, when you turn away, burn black - before you disappear, / leaving on the sidewalk a trail of charcoal". Merrill's art is for those who love uniqueness in poetry.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Watch Fire is a collection including poems from Christopher Merrill's first two books as well as later poems. It concludes with his exquisite long poem "Luck," which begins "For those not born to wealth or royalty, / Luck's a language learned by fits and starts." Merrill treats the fickleness of fate--and humanity's attempts to define fate--with both poignancy and humor. His imagery enters the mind like a new dialect, not with trite or clichéd metaphors, but startling and uncommon word pictures that heighten the mood as well as the senses, such as in "The Rope": "Your eyes, when you turn away, burn black--before you disappear, / leaving on the sidewalk a trail of charcoal." Merrill's art is for those who love uniqueness in poetry.

From Publishers Weekly

Merrill has an unusual ability to place himself in the midst of things, describe the immediate scene, and then reach through the scene to explore our place within it. Watch Fire, which also includes selections from his first two books, Workbook and Fever & Tides, allows one to monitor these restless investigations (restless because our own inability to connect with any given moment is so apparent). Thematically, both Frost and Galway Kinnell are echoed here, though Merrill's linguistic sensibility, with its imaginative leaps bordering on surrealism, is fraught with an exigency all its own. His range in form and subject matter is enormous and, as one moves from the early, highly lyrical poems of Workbook to the new selection of tougher, more chiselled poems in Luck, one is struck not just by the growth of Merrill's imagination but also by his tireless search for a language that captures the vitality of experience.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: White Pine Press; First edition. edition (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1877727431
• ISBN-13: 978-1877727436
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,808,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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