Merwin the mighty

MERWINOne of the great privileges of my life — aside from being a husband and a father, of course — was meeting W.S. Merwin. He was eager to get home to Hawaii, to his wife, to his gardens, but we talked for about an hour while he was visiting Claremont McKenna College a few years ago. I had my connections to the college, and my identity as a rep for a large newspaper, and that created the kind of opportunity that only seems possible in a dream. But I was also forewarned that he was leery of interviews and suspicious of reporters because they routinely mangled the currency of his craft and took his comments out of context. I was reminded of that warning after reading a comment included in a Huff Post article about a new film of the poet's life. Merwin sounds like a person whose life is characterized mainly by "I don't...":

"He said 'I'm not going to talk about Buddhism and I'm not going to talk about my writing process,' and on top of that, he's just a deeply private person," the filmmaker says in the article. Merwin  "put some creative parameters on what the film is."

Initially, I felt the same parameters. Especially when he eyed the digital recorder in my shirt breast-pocket. He told me not to use it. What could I do?  I tried so hard to keep up with the flow of his thoughts, but I couldn't scribble fast enough.

I knew his work pretty well, especially his Purgatorio translation and early poetry, and the lovely little book about his years in Provence. I asked him question after question. Maybe that made a difference.

I also started expressing my  frustrations over the fate of a manuscript, and he didn't hide his irritation at the whole marketing process, either. It was a revelation. The whole thing bothered him--Him!--too. When he talked about visiting Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth's, it felt like a flash-bomb had gone off in my face -- Pound, for God's sake, he knew Pound!

He was as generous to me, and as passionate about his work, as the young Princeton student who once talked poetry with John Berryman:

I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write

And suddenly I heard those words that I'd never expected to hear. He pointed at my recorder and said,  "ok, you can let it run a little."

 

RELATED: MERWIN AND ME

'When a warrior is gone'... Seamus Heaney

GONE FAR TOO SOON: The master in 2009. Ah God, I thought we'd have Seamus Heaney for at least a few more years. The wispy white-haired Irish laureate died in Dublin today, at the age of 74, according to various media reports, and there are no words to properly express what he contributed to poetry and language during his immense career.

He was a makaris; an archeologist of peat bogs and Latinate etymology; a singer of old songs ("Antigone," "Beowulf," from Virgil) in a thrilling modern idiom... and on and on. He was a wonder.

I'm wrong about one thing, though. There ARE very good words appropriate for this moment of loss  -- his own, taken from his best-selling translation of "Beowulf":

It is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning. For every one of us, living in this world means waiting for our end. Let whoever can win glory before death. When a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark.

He won plenty of glory, didn't he? I wonder if the thought ever crossed his mind, as he worked on these lines in his farmhouse years ago, that such words could apply to him and his career.

Rest in peace, old artificer.

Related articles

Poetry: More salt, please

Salt and pepper granules: credit -- Jon Sullivan Poet Michael Odom passed along a recent item from the UK edition of the Huff Post that illustrates poetry's continuing difficulties in the publishing marketplace. (Read Michael's work at Mao's Trap.) One of the big supporters of new and upcoming poets, Salt Publishing, has decided to scale back from publishing books solely devoted to a single author. Instead, they're sticking to the anthology and "best of" routes, and I get it, even though I'm not happy to hear about it. The official Salt announcement doesn't mention the business side -- anthology publishing, it says, will be used for "raising [poets'] profiles and reaching new readers" -- even though that's clearly what it's about.

The part that bugs me more is Robert Peake's response in the Huff Post blog, which I like and don't like. There's plenty to admire in his post (check it out for yourself), especially his inspiring words about the power of poetry to transform "our grey morning commute" and "[take] the top of our head off." But there's also a real defeated tone to the whole thing:

Maybe we're doomed. But we are doomed in good company--you and me--which is to say we are blessed indeed. Ask anyone. The poets always throw the best parties. They dance like they have nothing to lose, because it's true. And you and me, we've made it this far somehow, getting by, doing our thing, making life just about work.

John Keats died largely unrecognised. But ask his friends at the time, and he meant as much to them then as he does to many of us now. Do we really expect better for ourselves than the respect of a few respectable peers?

The audience is dwindling. Fine....

Really? It's fine? Yikes. I cherish Keats, but I don't think any working poet today wants to die young of consumption in some forgotten corner, right?  I understand that words are immortal, but isn't it good to stick around and belong to a community? Here are a couple of small things I'd suggest:

1) Buy poetry.  Don't just attend a poetry reading at your local bookstore: buy the book after the reading is done. Readings are about sharing and supporting each other, and if we can spend eight or nine bucks on two extra-large mochas with extra whipped cream, we can certainly invest in a chapbook of someone's observations.

2) Show some support to nonprofit and small publishers of poetry. Let them know you're out there. Here are three that I admire (the third one, by the way, keeps W.S. Merwin's works within easy reach):

Red Hen Press

Sarabande Books

Copper Canyon Press

3) Blog about the poets you've read and drop a link to their websites. Give readers a taste (and a place on the web) so that they won't have to wait for an anthology by Salt or somebody else. Let them know (along with the publishers) that you're out there and what they say is important to you.

In the comments field of this post, you're welcome to drop links to poetry publishers deserving of support. Onward, my friends.

Related articles

Books, books, books: It's time to show us your shelves!

A few of my favorite things: But watch out for the gargoyle... So what's on your bookshelves? Jilanne Hoffmann and I would like to know. What you see (above) is a corner of my decent collection -- decent, but definitely not crazy. I followed a strict diet a few years ago and passed along multiple boxes of books to a very grateful local library.

photo(4)I know, this post is supposed to be about pictures, not words, but forgive me for adding just a small bit of commentary. See those three large volumes, the ones in brown and blue? They're from the Nonesuch Dickens Collection, and they reproduce Dickens' novels in the exact format, with illustrations, that Ole' Boz saw in his lifetime. There's also a signed reader's galley of "The Unknown Terrorist" by the wonderful Tasmanian novelist, Richard Flanagan. And, what bookshelf wouldn't be complete without a gargoyle? He's on guard, night and day, to protect my collection from browsers who want to become borrowers! (If any other titles intrigue you, let me know and I'll give you more information than you wanted.)

So, just to repeat, what's on your shelves? Drop Jilanne a note at her blog, or leave one for us in the comments field and send us to your page for a look!

The Dogpatch Writers Collective is already on board. We hope you'll join us, too!

Related articles

Some painful reading

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Beata Beatrix, ca 1864-70.Here is the look of a great lady on the verge of death. Here is also the look of something else: What it feels like to read a bad book review.

I love the grim, gray pages of the Times Literary Supplement -- make that grim, grey pages -- even though the reading can get pretty tough at times, especially when you stumble on a bad review. They're not exactly hatchet jobs, but they seem just as pointless.

I was disappointed -- and a bit dismayed -- by a recent TLS piece on two translations of Dante's Vita Nova by a fellow who hasn't finished his doctorate yet.

It didn't bother me that he didn't care for the version by a guy I've worked with before -- Andrew Frisardi -- but it's all the high-minded nonsense in his criticism that's hard to take. It's the I-know-Dante-better-than-Dante-himself tone that all graduate Lit students suffer from (speaking from experience here).

"One wonders," the review says about a modern euphemism Frisardi uses, "whether the quest for modernity extends to political correctness. How else to explain the female subject of 'acts cool' when the Italian has a genderless (etymologically masculine) 'colui'?"

This graf is so full of posturing that I'm not going to waste space on an explanation.

A few lines later, there's a nice backhanded compliment: "Where Frisardi's edition excels is in its use of current scholarship. With over 200 pages of notes... it is surely intended for students, though echoing their speech in the lyric is a questionable strategy."

"it is surely intended..." Good grief.  That sounds like the assessment of someone who never steps outside or takes a break from the books. Or hasn't read David R. Slavitt. Or Lowell's imitations.

I'm adding this to my folder of bad examples of book reviews -- right alongside a ridiculously negative review (also in the TLS) of Arthur Phillips' novel The Tragedy of Arthur by an Elizabethan scholar who didn't think Phillips' Shakespearean verse was Shakespearean enough.

If you're ever the subject of such a review, my friends, please take heart. Even though the printed page gives validity to these pieces, try to work through your feelings and just remember that your most important critic should be you (etymologically neutral).

Related articles