(Cooper Canyon) This expansion on Merwin’s previous collection, The Shadow of Sirius, touches upon the same themes of age, memory, childhood, and man’s relationship to the national world. Publishers Weekly writes that it evokes “a new and hard-won sense of beauty, a kind of worldly astonishment.” Merwin is one the country’s best-selling poets. He served as poet laureate to the United States and has won the Pulitzer Prize.