SOURCE: "Merwin's Progress," in The New Leader, Vol. LXXI, No. 9, May 16-30, 1988, pp. 22-3.

In the review below, Pettingell offers a thematic analysis of The Rain in the Trees.

It is no wonder that poetry concerned with spiritual perceptions tends to be pastoral. When people embody ideas from their inner life, they usually select metaphors from nature. The earliest examples of religious art we know are those luminous beasts our ancestors painted on the walls of their caves. The Greeks portrayed their deities coming to earth disguised as animals or birds. And in Holy Scripture the relationship between man and God is depicted in terms of sheep and their shepherd.

English poetry contains endless examples of scenic views mirroring psychic landscapes. Marvell insisted that the philosophic mind prefers life in "The Garden" where it can create "other worlds and other seas / Annihilating all that's made / To a green...