Publisher Description

In 1944, New Directions brought out Thomas Merton's first book of verse. By the time of his tragic, untimely death in 1968, Father Louis (as he was known at the Trappist monastery where he lived for twenty-seven years) had published upwards of fifty books and pamphlets, including several more collections of poetry. All of these poems have been assembled in a single, definitive volume (first published by New Directions in 1977) which includes much additional unpublished or uncollected material drawn from the archive of the Merton Studies Center at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky, or supplied by the poet's friends and associates. Brought together inThe Collected Poems of Thomas Mertonare:Early Poems(1940-42, published posthumously in 1971),Thirty Poems(1944),A Man in the Divided Sea(1946),Figures for an Apocalypse(1947),The Tear of the Blind Lions(1949),The Strange Islands(1957),Original Child Bomb(1962),Emblems of a Season of Fun(1963),Cables to Ace(1968), andThe Geography of Lograire(completed in 1968 and published posthumously). These are followed bySensation Time at the Home and Other New Poems, a book which Merton completed shortly before his death. There are also sections of uncollected poems, humorous verse, poems written in French, with some English translations, Merton's translations of poetry from various languages, drafts and fragments, and a selection of concrete poems. With the availability ofThe Collected Poems of Thomas Mertonas a New Directions paperbook, an ever wider audience may more fully appreciate the impressive range of the poet's technique, the scope of his concerns, and the humaneness of his vision.

Author Biography

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) entered the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, following his conversion to Catholicism and was ordained Father M. Louis in 1949. During the 1960s, he was increasingly drawn into a dialogue between Eastern and Western religions and domestic issues of war and racism. In 1968, the Dalai Lama praised Merton for having a more profound knowledge of Buddhism than any other Christian he had known. Thomas Merton is the author of the beloved classic The Seven Storey Mountain.

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