THE SINGING GREEN: New and Selected Poems for All Seasons

The late poet continued and commemorated her love affair with words in this mixture of new and old verses, the latter from out-of-print sources. The book opens with bubbly celebrations--of vanilla, the letter ""J,"" sounds, and places (""You can ride for long treks/in Tex. and N. Mex.""), as well as limericks, jump-rope rhymes, a tribute to Ogden Nash (""a skink/unlike a skunk/does not stink./A skink is a skink/a reptilian slink,"" and more serious antiwar and anti-TV sentiments. In a second section, Merriam switched to a sober tone, gathering ruminations on age, writing, love, and poetry and employing complex images and more sophisticated wordplay (""The Wholly Family""), poignantly concluding with ""Skywriting""--""The flight soaring,/the song outpouring./The flight dying,/the song still flying."" Illustrations not seen.