Reading W.S. Merwin in a New Century: American and European Perspectives

Description

This edited collection explores the work of highly awarded and twice American Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin. Spanning Merwin’s early career, his mid-career success, his Hawaiian epic, his eco-poetry, his lesser-known later poetry and the influence of Buddhism on his work, the volume offers new perspectives on Merwin as a major poet. Exploring his works across the twentieth and twenty-first century, this collection presents Merwin as a necessary and contemporary poet. It emphasizes contemporary readings of Merwin as an environmental advocate, showing how his poetry seeks to help each reader re-establish an intimate relationship with the natural world. It also highlights how Merwin’s work presents our place in history as a pivotal moment of transition into a new era of international cooperation. This volume both celebrates his life and writing and takes scholarship on his work forward into the new century. Acknowledgments Contents Notes on Contributors Chapter 1: Introduction Some Background on Merwin Evangelist of Nature Merwin and Other Poets Nature, Zen, and Ecopoetics The Poet’s Craft The Sense of an Ending Conclusion: The Survivor: “the future splits the present with the echo of my voice” Part I: Merwin and Other Poets Chapter 2: “High Company”: W.S. Merwin, John Berryman and the Art of Poetry “Berryman” “Lament for the Makers” Conclusion Works Cited Chapter 3: The Value and Forms of Contact in the Work of William Carlos Williams and W.S. Merwin Works Cited Chapter 4: The Lost Steps: W. S. Merwin and the Journey Backward Works Cited Part II: Nature, Zen and Ecopoetics Chapter 5: Bound to Reverence: Not Knowing, Emptiness, Time, and Nature in W.S. Merwin’s Poetry Not Knowing and Emptiness Emptiness and the Sources of Poetry Connectedness and Not Knowing Loss and Dispossession The Dark Side of God, the Nameless One Writing to Stop the Coming Extinction Psalms of Nature in His Poetry The Reign of No One, Dark Prophecy Speaking to Whom? Prayer Emptiness, Origins Obliterated Centeredness in Buddhism Time and Timelessness in Nature Awakening in/to Nature Works Cited Chapter 6: Merwin’s Ecopoetic Conservancy Works Cited Chapter 7: Reverence for Nature: Trees in the Poetry of W.S. Merwin and Others Trees as Blessings: Wendell Berry W.S. Merwin’s The Rain in the Trees Connection to the Land Connection to the Past Keeper of Values; Source of Meaning Conclusion Works Cited Chapter 8: The Fox Sleeps in Plain Sight: Zen in the Poetry of W. S. Merwin Works Cited Part III: The Poet’s Craft Chapter 9: “A Sense of Being Linked with People”: Poetry, Listening, Intonation Introduction Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Stage 5 Works Cited Chapter 10: Lyric “Unpunctuation”: W. S. Merwin’s Early New Yorker Correspondence Works Cited Chapter 11: W.S. Merwin’s Homecoming in the Heart of Europe An “Un-American” Poem? Bringing Dead Languages Back to Life The Custodian of Ancient Traditions Conclusion Works Cited Chapter 12: Resilience of the Oracular in W.S. Merwin’s “Forgotten Language” Aphorism and “Finality of Utterance” Translation and Anacoluthon The End of Punctuation and Beginning of Orality Delphic-Style Oracular Rhetoric Oracular Environmentalism Riddles, Answers, Altered Realities Poetics of Preservation and Astonishment Works Cited Part IV: The Sense of an Ending Chapter 13: W.S. Merwin’s “Retirement”: Late Style and Themes in the 1990s and After Works Cited Chapter 14: Merwin’s Epic of Dispossession Works Cited Chapter 15: Memory, Belatedness, and Paradise in W.S. Merwin’s Later Poetry Works Cited Chapter 16: “The Last Days of the World”: Apocalyptic Visions in the Poetry of W.S. Merwin and William Butler Yeats “The End of the World as We Know It...” (Our Fascination with the Apocalypse) “We Thought It Was There and Would Stay….” (Yeats and Merwin’s Visions) “The Whole World Is Burning…” (Reversals of Fortune) “Behold the Smoke Has Come Home…” (The Earth’s Grim Fate) “Wrapped in the Bed of Ashes…” (Man’s Self-Destruction) “Everything I Remember…” (Mourning Our Loss) A Greater Purpose (Conclusion) Works Cited Chronology Index