To help readers become familiar with Merwin's earlier career, Copper Canyon Press published a thrift edition entitled The First Four Books of Poems, which contains "A Mask for Janus," "The Dancing Bears," "Green with Beasts," and "The Drunk in the Furnace." The same press has also published The Second Four Books of Poems, which includes "The Moving Target," "The Life," "The Carrier of Ladders," and "Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment."

One of the strongest influences on Merwin was John Berryman, with whom he studied at Princeton. Berryman's 1964 collection 77 Dream Songs, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, is considered one of the great books of twentieth-century poetry. It is available as The Dream Songs, published by Noonday Press and released in 1982.

Maurice Manning is the most recent winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, for which Merwin is...