The Very Best Of All Merwin: I

To Be A Poet Did Not Occur To Me. It Was Indeed A Threshold Guarded By Demons.

The World Gets Older, Without Getting Either Better Or Worse And So Does Literature. But I Do Think That The Drab Current Phenomenon That Passes For Literary Studies In The University Will Finally Provide Its Own Corrective.

Information Is Endlessly Available To Us; Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

Read Deeply, Not To Believe, Not To Accept, Not To Contradict, But To Learn To Share In That One Nature That Writes And Reads.

...the Bible Itself Is Less Read Than Preached, Less Interpreted Than Brandished. Increasingly, Pastors May Drape A Limply Bound Book Over The Edges Of The Pulpit As They Depart From It. Members Of The Congregation Carry Bibles To Church Services; The Paster Announces A Long Passage Text For His Sermon And Waits For People To Find It, Then Reads Only The First Verse Of It Before He Takes Off. The Book Has Become A Talisman.