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A review by csnow33
The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin
2.0
I'm starting to be less and less surprised when I'm disappointed by award-winning things. The fact that this collection won a Pulitzer no longer shocks me.
While there were a few lines that I think were genuinely noteworthy, the vast majority of this can be summed up as intellectually lazy. It's not saying anything I haven't heard a thousand times before in more interesting and nuanced ways. Humans age, forget things, and die. Those who are left behind mourn them and wonder what happens beyond death. Also, space is awesome. Yes, yes, yes. I know that already.
Merwin uses simple, common language to talk about complex topics like moments of existentialism, fading memories, and death. However, because his language is straightforward, there's not much to what he's saying. It reads like a smart, well-intentioned high schooler who lacks the life experience to understand his "deep" poetry is not actually as "deep" as they think it is (which is surprising because Merwin has both the life and writing experience to have successfully pulled this off). Once you read a poem, you get it, and there's little to no re-read value because there's nothing profound to dissect.
Other technical issues I had with these poems include the wasted stylistic choice to not use punctuation or capitalization. It had no bearing on the overall meaning and if anything just messed up the flow. There were times when it was legitimately infuriating in its tediousness because the line breaks meant nothing and there's no punctuation to tell me where one mundane thought stops and another begins.
While there were a few lines that I think were genuinely noteworthy, the vast majority of this can be summed up as intellectually lazy. It's not saying anything I haven't heard a thousand times before in more interesting and nuanced ways. Humans age, forget things, and die. Those who are left behind mourn them and wonder what happens beyond death. Also, space is awesome. Yes, yes, yes. I know that already.
Merwin uses simple, common language to talk about complex topics like moments of existentialism, fading memories, and death. However, because his language is straightforward, there's not much to what he's saying. It reads like a smart, well-intentioned high schooler who lacks the life experience to understand his "deep" poetry is not actually as "deep" as they think it is (which is surprising because Merwin has both the life and writing experience to have successfully pulled this off). Once you read a poem, you get it, and there's little to no re-read value because there's nothing profound to dissect.
Other technical issues I had with these poems include the wasted stylistic choice to not use punctuation or capitalization. It had no bearing on the overall meaning and if anything just messed up the flow. There were times when it was legitimately infuriating in its tediousness because the line breaks meant nothing and there's no punctuation to tell me where one mundane thought stops and another begins.