Guernica Editions

“Your heart is always the immigrant,” says the itinerant poet Emmanuel Merle as he takes the reader with him through the American West, past sheep like “scraps of clouds,” over the plains like “a dough / Spread out in the oven, darkened by the white-hot sun.” Peter Brown’s translation of Merle’s sustained meditation evokes Richard Hugo by name and in spirit, triggered by the towns, and how they evidence life. Looking at a trailer buried in snow, Merle says: “I hear a child’s laughter / verify the world.” So these poems of intense focus verify the power of metaphor “to transfer,” to carry us to places where the inherent meaning of our lives becomes clarified through comparisons. But Merle is like no one else. Wander, and enjoy!