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And welcome on behalf
of the Poetry Center.

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This is the first event
of the series this year.

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We're delighted that
you're all here.

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And we hope that this will be
a particularly stellar series

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for you.

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Some of the other authors
we have coming this fall

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include the Slovenian
poet Tomaz Salamun

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and the much-loved
Lucille Clifton.

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In the spring, we'll be bringing
Junot Díaz, August Kleinzahler,

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and Jorie Graham among others.

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I would like to let you know
that the U of A Bookstore

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is here tonight with
W.S. Merwin's books,

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including the brand new
book, The Folding Cliffs.

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We're particularly
grateful that [INAUDIBLE]

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has been able to
get the book for us

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since its official pub date
isn't until October 13.

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And we also have a number of
the earlier works as well.

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And I'm sure the author will be
happy to sign the books for you

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after the reading.

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Tonight's reading is sponsored
by the Friends of the Poetry

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Center, our individual donors,
many of whom are here tonight.

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We thank you and urge you to
continue supporting our efforts

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as generously as you can.

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If you'd like to be
on our mailing list

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to find out about other events,
you can sign up outside next

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to the book table afterwards.

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I have spent most of
the last three days

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reading W.S. Merwin's new
book, The Folding Cliffs,

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and it has been a
remarkable experience.

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So I'm very happy and
honored that we're all here

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tonight to celebrate
with him the publication

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of this major new work.

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Merwin's first book, A Mask for
Janus, was chosen by W.H. Auden

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for the Yale Series of
Younger Poets in 1952.

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The Folding Cliffs is his
16th collection of poetry.

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He's also written
plays, one of which,

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The Darkling Child, was
produced in London in 1956,

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four works of prose, including
in 1992, The Lost Upland,

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set in southwestern France,
and one of only nine books

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selected for the New York Times
list of best books in 1992.

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He's translated widely for many
languages, most significantly,

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the great national epics of
French and Spanish literature,

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The Song of Roland and
The Poem of the Cid.

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His honors are many,
including the Pulitzer Prize,

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the Bollingen Prize, the
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize,

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and the Governor's
Award for Literature

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from the state of Hawaii.

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Of his poetry, it is perhaps the
work of the second four books

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that is best known
and most widely loved.

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The intensely compacted
poems of cool radiance,

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to borrow the description given
by Richard Howard of the books

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originally published between
1963 and '73, The Moving Target,

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The Lice, The Carrier
of Ladders and Writings

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to an Unfinished Accompaniment.

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Those books now available in
one volume from Copper Canyon.

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But in recent books,
Travels and The Vixen,

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the poems have expanded to
honor the importance of story

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and to encompass a deep
historical perspective.

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That impulse now
comes to fruition

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in the extraordinary work The
Folding Cliffs, a narrative

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of 19th century Hawaii.

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This book reads
like a great novel,

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telling the story of
one family's flight

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into the wilds of Kauai
in order to survive

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the efforts of the provisional
government and its soldiers

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to arrest and isolate
victims of leprosy.

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This very human story is
set within a sense of time

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that encompasses the entire
natural and cultural evolution

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of the Hawaiian Islands.

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And while it has the thematic
density and weight of a novel,

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it has the music and
lushness of language,

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the strangely riveting
tensions in the lines,

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and the spiritual
hunger of great poetry.

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John Hollander has
described The Folding Cliffs

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as a powerful revisionary
telling of a powerful story that

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makes of a far-flung corner of
American geography and history

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a central event for
our national culture.

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The book is a gift to our
understanding of ourselves

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as tragic, natural,
and cultural beings.

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And it is a gift to
the art of poetry

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in demonstrating that after
all of the unravelings

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of the 20th century,
poetry can still

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rise to the task of telling
a great and luminous story.

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Please welcome W.S. Merwin.

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