Poet W.S. Merwin followed where the words led
Lyn Chase, president of the Academy of American Poets, presented W.S. Merwin with the first Tanning Prize during a ceremony in Washington in 1994.
AP/File
Since Friday, when poet and translator W.S. Merwin died at his home in Maui, Hawaii, I鈥檝e been thinking about the phone interview he gave me in 2003.聽聽
鈥淧oetry can鈥檛 be done as an act of will. You can鈥檛 say, 鈥業 will now write a poem,鈥欌�� he noted early in our conversation. Yet every morning he sat down to write on scrap paper. 鈥淚t has to be a piece of paper that is worthless. The idea of taking a blank sheet would be very intimidating.鈥� 聽
I was surprised by that humble admission, given that Mr. Merwin published more than 50 books in his lifetime. Like many poets, he often began with a sound, 鈥渟ome phrase or sentence that suddenly seems to be very much alive, but I don鈥檛 know where it is going. I find out by listening.鈥�
Why We Wrote This
Once called 鈥渢he Thoreau of our era,鈥� W.S. Merwin was an environmentalist who transformed concrete language into evanescent poetry that reflected on war, spirituality, and the natural and metaphysical worlds.
Over time, that listening led Mr. Merwin, the son of a Presbyterian minister, to evolve from writing tight, image-driven poems to longer, experimental work, and from classical subjects to political and ecological concerns and, later, to metaphysical inquiries. It also helped him become one of our most decorated poets, beginning with his first book, 鈥淭he Mask of Janus,鈥� which was chosen by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Series in 1951. Mr. Merwin won his first Pulitzer Prize for 鈥嬧�淭he Carrier of Ladders鈥� (1971); the National Book Award for 鈥淢igration: New and Selected Poems鈥澛�(2007); and his second Pulitzer for 鈥淭he Shadow of Sirius鈥� (2009). He also served as the nation鈥檚 17th Poet Laureate Consultant of the United States in 2010-11.
What remained consistent throughout his career was his willingness to follow where the work led, and his commitment to preserving the natural world.
During our conversation, he mentioned that after he finished writing, he would plant a few palm trees on his 19-acre home in Maui, Hawaii, slowly reclaiming land that almost had been ruined when it was used to raise pineapples in the 1930s.
What was so appealing about palm trees, I wondered.
鈥淵ou can fall in love with palms because they鈥檙e incredibly ancient. They go back at least 60 million years, yet they鈥檙e still evolving,鈥� he explained. Also, 鈥淧alms can be grown quite close to each other, and when they grow up they make a canopy, but they work out their relationships with each other very well.鈥�
Mr. Merwin, who began studying Buddhism in 1970, worked through many essential questions in his writing. As the poet Edward Hirsch has written, 鈥淲. S. Merwin is one of the greatest poets of our age. He is a rare spiritual presence in American life and letters (the Thoreau of our era).鈥� 聽
His metaphysical approach shaped even short poems in his later work, as with the lovely 鈥淩ain at Daybreak,鈥� published in his final book, 鈥淕arden Time鈥� (2016):
One at a time the drops find their own leaves
then others follow as the story spreads
they arrive unseen among the waking doves
who answer from the sleep of the valley
there is no other voice or other time
His contribution to American poetry is profound. When I think about how his work has impacted me and many other writers, the opening lines of 鈥淭he Wings of Daylight,鈥� another poem from his final collection, immediately come to mind:
Brightness appears showing us everything
it reveals the splendors it calls everything
but shows it to each of聽us alone
and only once and only to look at
not to touch or hold in our shadows
Poems used by permission of Copper Canyon Press.
Elizabeth Lund writes about poetry for 海角大神 and The Washington Post.