We were fortunate to be in the audience last night for a special event, a reading by Pualani Kanaka‘ole-Kanahele of selections from W.S. Merwin’s narrative poem set in 19th century Hawaii, “The Folding Cliffs.”

A repeat is scheduled for Sunday evening, October 13, in the McCoy Studio Theater at Maui Arts & Cultural Center, 7pm. If you’re over on Maui, I highly recommend it.

The evening was presented by the Honolulu Museum of Art and The Merwin Conservancy. It was the first in a series of readings over the next six months “in memory of the conservancy’s founder, poet and environmentalist W.S. Merwin.”

Merwin’s poem is in the style of Robert Penn Warren’s “Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce: A Poem“, a similarly long, rambling narrative that tells the story of an era. Published in 1983, I expect that Penn Warren’s work must have been on Merwin’s mind as he launched on the six-year long project that became The Folding Cliffs.

From the program notes:

In this special presentation, Dr. Kanahele, a longtime friend of Mr. Merwin, will read from his epic Hawaiian narrative poem “The Folding Cliffs”, and will discuss Merwin’s masterwork through a kanaka maoli lens. “The Folding Cliffs”, published in 1998, is a thrilling story, in verse, of nineteenth-century Hawaii. It tells the story of an attempt by the government to seize and constrain possible victims of leprosy and the determination of one small family–Ko‘olau, Pi‘ilani, and their son, Kaleimanu–not to be taken. Merwin’s verses tell of the perils and glories of their flight into the wilds of the island of Kaua‘i, pursued by a gunboat full of soldiers.

In any case, even if you can’t get to either reading, you can still read Merwin’s book.

I ran across this snapshop taken with William and Paula Merwin in December 1995 at their home on Maui after a few glasses of wine. I’m so glad it wasn’t lost.