I am not a fan of W.S. Merwin’s overall body of work. I don’t think that’s a secret.

But when I walked into Capitol Hill Books on C Street SE, made my way up the book cramped stairs and into the back room where poetry is stacked on counters, shelves and two stolen library carts… I saw it. Right near the door, in one of the library carts, in fact. It hadn’t been there the other week. I would have noticed, believe.

The Carrier of Ladders.

Merwin’s 1972 masterwork. A politicized collection of eco-poetry, sprinkled with anti-war sentiment.

What can I say? It’s amazing.

It’s a reminder how, in comparison, virtually everything he’s written in the succeeding thirty-nine years is just so much c–p. Pale, shallow, bloodless, workshopped imitations of his greatest work.

But this here is the stuff. It’s why people will bother reading him in a quarter century. His latest ruminations will be forgotten, but his early elegiac, passionate poems, bursting beyond the limits of his free verse forms to achieve something meaningful and memorable, will be remembered.

I wish I’d had a copy of this when I got his autograph at the Library of Congress.