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Summer Doorways: A Memoir
By W. S. Merwin
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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About this ebook
A memoir of youth and travel through post-WWII Europe from the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning poet of Migrations.
In 1948, both the European continent and a young poet named William Stanley Merwin were embarking on periods of profound change. Twenty-one, newly married and just graduated from Princeton, Merwin made what at the time was considered an extraordinary journey to The Old Continent. Merwin says of the trip, “such departure was still surrounded with an atmosphere of adventure and improvisation, and my youth and inexperience and my all but complete lack of money heightened that vertiginous sensation.”
Summer Doorways captures Merwin at a pivotal time in his life, just a few years before he won the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1952 for his first book, A Mask for Janus. The moment was, as the author writes, “an entire age just before it was gone, like a summer.” Traveling with him through his “splendidly detailed and sensuous descriptions,” readers have the privilege of glimpsing “recollections that capture lost time and trace the making of a poet” (Booklist).
In 1948, both the European continent and a young poet named William Stanley Merwin were embarking on periods of profound change. Twenty-one, newly married and just graduated from Princeton, Merwin made what at the time was considered an extraordinary journey to The Old Continent. Merwin says of the trip, “such departure was still surrounded with an atmosphere of adventure and improvisation, and my youth and inexperience and my all but complete lack of money heightened that vertiginous sensation.”
Summer Doorways captures Merwin at a pivotal time in his life, just a few years before he won the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1952 for his first book, A Mask for Janus. The moment was, as the author writes, “an entire age just before it was gone, like a summer.” Traveling with him through his “splendidly detailed and sensuous descriptions,” readers have the privilege of glimpsing “recollections that capture lost time and trace the making of a poet” (Booklist).
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Reviews for Summer Doorways
Rating: 3.875 out of 5 stars
4/5
12 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A look back on the author's early years and his first encounter with Europe in the 1950s
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I wonder if Merwin had not had all the chance opportunities in his early life, if he would have become the man he was. His seems to be a life well-lived.