Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. W. S. Merwin is a defining writer for our age, a poet who, over the course of sixty years and more than forty books, has created a body of work of enormous range, ambition, and complexity. He has served as the United States Poet Laureate and is the recipient of almost every major American award for poetry, including the 2005 National Book Award and two Pulitzer Prizes, first in 1971 and again in 2009. In this volume, for the first time, fifteen poets and critics gather to discuss the last quarter century of his work, beginning with The Rain in the Trees, a collection of poems that marks a turning point in Merwin's career. At times personal and at times scholarly, these essays place the poet's recent work in the context of a lifetime of writing, and help us to understand how this seminal literary figure fits into the ongoing conversation of American poetry. Includes a preface by editors Jonathan Weinert and Kevin Prufer, a transcript of an interview with W. S. Merwin, and essays by David Caplan, Steven Cramer, Debra Kang Dean, Forrest Gander, Mark Halliday, Jerry Harp, H. L. Hix, Mark Irwin, Sarah Kennedy, Eric Pankey, Lisa Russ Spaar, Michael Theune, Jeanie Thompson and Matthew Zapruder.