W.S. Merwin: Much to Say (A Poet Review)
Contemporary poetry may be described by some as having a lack of form, but it is far more complex than it looks. Perhaps it is even more so than its ancestor, the rhyming poem. With the new-found freedom of free verse poetry, poets are able to say more than they could in the past because all arbitrary constraints have been removed. What remains for a poet is finding how to relate to an audience without being cliché, and W.S. Merwin excels at this in his poetry anthology, Present Company.
W.S. Merwin is not new to this art form, publishing his first poetry anthologies in the 1950's during his thirties. He was born in New York City in 1927 but grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He started writing when he was young, creating hymns for his father, a minister at the local church. His interest in writing followed him to adulthood, and it was this love for poetry that convinced him to leave the confining structure of college and instead pursue his goals more freely (Stern).
After making this decision, he went to Washington D.C. and met Ezra Pound where he was given the advice to translate poetry in order to have something to write every day. Pound told him that as an eighteen-year old, he did not have anything to write about yet. Merwin took the advice and learned to translate other languages, beginning with Italian, French, Spanish, and Rumanian (Stern). Eventually, he translated Chinese, Vietnamese, and African works with the assistance of native speakers. This allowed him to expand his vocabulary and look at language in new ways (Stern).
He received his first break after his poem “A Mask of Janus” was recognized, and he was picked as the winner in the Yale Younger Poets series. He has won other awards since then, including the Pulitzer Prize for his anthology, The Shadows of Sirius (Moon). His love for poetry and language still continues after all these years.
Through those decades in the twentieth century and now into the new millennium, it is clear that Merwin has always had a lot on his mind. With every artist, there is bound to be visible improvement and other changes in style over the years. W.S. Merwin's recent poetry has a different look than what he published in the past.
When I compared Merwin's Present Company to an older anthology of his, Selected Poems (1988), I noticed that the lines in his poetry had become shorter, more condensed. There is a clear contrast with his older poetry when looking at it straight on. In the past, his poetry almost resembled paragraphs, and now there are lines of two, three, or four words for the majority of his writing. It has me wondering if all those years underneath his belt have helped him perfect knowing what is just enough to say to get a point across.
Merwin's use of short lines are not the only technique that defines his poetry. Merwin also uses no punctuation (aside from one em dash I was shocked to find on the side of one of his poems). Not only does this characterize his old poetry, but it is a habit that he carried on to his new writing as well. While reading his poetry, I found myself subconsciously injecting punctuation where I saw fit. I wonder if this is his intention, if he wants the readers to have a little control over the poem, so they can make it theirs too.
However, his lack of punctuation, at times, creates confusion when reading a poem. One example is his poem “To the Knife” (Present, 43):
and the unseen come down
into nothing to pass
between to separate
to open to divide
what had been once from what
once it had been to tell
apart bringing always
the touch of the present
I stumbled over his middle lines, “what had been once from what/once it had been to tell/apart bringing always,” which led me to wonder if the addition of punctuation could have prevented this in some way. At other times, his exclusion of punctuation does not take away from the beauty of his writing, and it flows just as I believe he had intended. His poem,“To Air,” has this effect (Present, 44).
could I live without you
never have you
belonged to me
never do I want
you not to be with me
the breath of everyone
and of each word spoken
without needing to know
the meaning of any of them
The collection that I chose not only showed his ability to write passages that read well, it also highlighted his talent of personifying objects and thoughts. In Present Company, Merwin does an interesting thing of titling every poem in the anthology with “To...” as if they are all letters of some kind. Some of these, such as “To My Teeth”, evoke imagery that is not often paired with the word. In “To My Teeth”, Merwin relates teeth to soldiers in war (Present, 13).
lost one by one by pain
and the coming home one
bare day to a later
age that was their own
but with their scars now upon them
and now darkened and worn and some
broken beyond recognition
and still missing the ones
taken away from beside them
There are many other examples of his aptitude of personification in this anthology, including “To the Tongue” in which he writes “naked sleeper in the cave/where you were born” and “To the Shadow” which has the line “you are there on/the other side/twin shaped form of/nothing but absence” (Present 17, 21).
Some poems even complement each other, such as “To a Reflection” and “To the Face in the Mirror” (Present, 5, 6). Both titles cover similar concepts, but they are written in different ways. “To a Reflection” is about the idea that our reflection looks like us but is unlike us all the same: “though you write backwards/your left our right/so that we can never read you.” In “To the Face in the Mirror,” Merwin writes about how far away the reflection is although it appears so close.
Other poems of Merwin's showcase his ability to write rhythmically. A favorite of mine is “To the Present Visitors” (Present 42).
as they have been doing since the words
were all in Latin no cameras
allowed in here notice the slight breeze
from the windows here among the trees
and the fragrance at the end of spring
notice the leaves outside the window frames
the new grass in the light of the morning
notice the charts of colors on the walls
set in order and the moons in the calendars
the constellations the dark dials
In this poem, Merwin uses many of my favorite elements in free verse poetry. He uses similar consonant and vowel sounds, words that rhyme or almost rhyme, and alliteration in places. These characterize pieces of his other poems as well, but he tends to use these sparingly.
Instead, Merwin focuses on imagery. He creates an image with each of his poems, and these images are accompanied by feelings expressed by him and also felt by the reader. He writes about nature, common events, and observations. His topics are not unique, but the way he expresses them on paper is different from anything else I've seen.
Works Cited
Merwin, W. S. Present Company. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 2005. Print.
Merwin, W. S. The Moon before Morning. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 2014. Print.
Stern, Fred. "The two deserts of W.S. Merwin." World and I Sept. 2010. General OneFile. Web. 21 Apr. 2015.
If you haven't introduced yourself to Merwin, do yourself a favor and give him a chance. I'm sure you will gain something from his writing.