Michael Wutz - Conversations with W. S. Merwin

Conversations with W. S. Merwin

Literary Conversations Series

Conversations with W. S. Merwin

Edited by Michael Wutz and Hal Crimmel

University Press of Mississippi Jackson

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright 1967, 1993 by W. S. Merwin for A Scale in May, When the War Is Over, and Looking for Mushrooms at Sunrise, currently collected in The Second Four Book of Poems, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

Copyright 2005 by W. S. Merwin for For the Anniversary of My Death, Leviathan, The Drunk in the Furnace, When the War Is Over, The Asians Dying, Presidents, Looking for Mushrooms at Sunrise, Grandfather in the Old Mens Home, and Yesterday, currently collected in Migrations, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

W. S. Merwin, excerpts from The Nomad Flute, Rain Light, Youth, Still Morning, The Song of the Trolleys, The Long and the Short of It, To Paula in Late Spring, and Going from The Shadow of Sirius. Copyright 2008 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercan-yonpress.org.

The Nomad Flute, Rain Light, Youth, Still Morning, The Song of the Trolleys, The Long and the Short of It, To Paula in Late Spring, and Going from The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin. Copyright 2009 by W. S. Merwin, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

Copyright 2015 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2015

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Merwin, W. S. (William Stanley), 1927

Conversations with W. S. Merwin / edited by Michael Wutz and Hal Crimmel.

pages cm. (Literary conversations series)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-62846-222-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-62674-619-0 (ebook) 1. Merwin, W. S. (William Stanley), 1927Interviews. 2. Poets, American20th centuryInterviews. 3. PoetryAuthorship. I. Wutz, Michael, editor. II. Crimmel, Hal, 1966 editor. III. Title.

PS3563.E75Z46 2015

811.54dc23

[B]

2014039427

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Books by W. S. Merwin

Poetry

A Mask for Janus. New Haven and London: Yale UP and Oxford UP, 1952.

The Dancing Bears. New Haven: Yale UP, 1954.

Green with Beasts: Poems. London: Hart-Davis, 1956. New York: Knopf, 1956.

The Drunk in the Furnace. New York: Macmillan, 1960.

The Moving Target. New York: Atheneum, 1963.

Collected Poems. New York: Atheneum. 1966.

The Lice: Poems. New York: Atheneum, 1967. London: Hart-Davis, 1967.

Animae. San Francisco: Kayak, 1969.

The Carrier of Ladders. New York: Atheneum, 1970.

Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment. New York: Atheneum, 1973.

The Compass Flower: Poems. New York: Atheneum, 1977.

Opening the Hand: Poems. New York: Atheneum, 1983.

Regions of Memory: Uncollected Prose 194982. W. S. Merwin. Edited by Ed Folsom and Cary Nelson. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

The Rain in the Trees: Poems. New York: Knopf, 1988.

Selected Poems. New York: Atheneum, 1988.

The Second Four Books of Poems. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 1993.

Travels: Poems. New York: Knopf, 1993.

Flower & Hand: Poems, 19771983. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 1996.

The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative of 19th-century Hawaii. New York: Knopf, 1998.

The River Sound: Poems. New York: Knopf, 1999.

The First Four Books of Poems. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2000.

The Pupil: Poems. New York: Knopf, 2001.

Migration: New & Selected Poems. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2005.

The Shadow of Sirius. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2008.

The Collected Poems of W. S. Merwin, 19521993. 2 vols. Edited by J. D. McClatchy. New York: Library of America, 2013.

The Collected Poems of W. S. Merwin, 19962011. 2 vols. Edited by J. D. McClatchy. New York: Library of America, 2013.

The Moon before Morning. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2014.

Prose

The Miners Pale Children. New York: Atheneum, 1970.

Houses and Travellers: Prose. New York: Atheneum, 1977.

Unframed Originals. New York: Atheneum, 1982.

The Lost Upland: Stories of Southwest France. New York: Knopf, 1992.

The Mays of Ventadorn. Washington D.C.: National Geographic, 2002.

Summer Doorways: A Memoir. Washington D.C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005.

The Book of Fables. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

Translations

The Poem of the Cid. London: Dent, 1959.

The Satires of Persius. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1961.

Medieval Epics. 1963. Translated with William Alfred and Helen M. Mustard. New York: Modern Library, 1998.

The Song of Roland. New York: Vintage Books, 1963.

Selected Translations, 19481968. New York: Atheneum, 1968.

Products of the Perfected Civilization: Selected Writings of Chamfort, by Sbastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

Transparence of the World, by Jean Follain. New York: Atheneum, 1969.

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda. London: Cape, 1969.

Voices, by Antonio Porchia. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 1969.

Selected Poems, by Osip Mandelstam. Translated with Clarence Brown. New York: Atheneum, 1970.

Asian Figures. New York: Atheneum, 1972.

Sanskrit Love Poems. Translated with J. Moussaieff Masson. London: E. Alkazi, 1977.

Iphigeneia at Aulis, by Euripides. Translated with George E. Dimock. New York: Oxford UP, 1978.

Selected Translations, 19681978. New York: Atheneum, 1979.

Vertical Poetry, by Roberto Juarroz. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988.

Sun at Midnight: Poems and Sermons, by Mus Soseki. Translated with Soiku Shigematsu. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989.

Gacela of Unforeseen Love, by Federico Garca Lorca. Washington: October Mountain. 1993.

Blood Wedding and Yerma, by Federico Garca Lorca. Translated with Langston Hughes. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994.

East Window: The Asian Translations. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 1998.

Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri. New York: Knopf, 2000.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation. New York: Knopf, 2002.

Collected Haiku of Yosa Buson. Translated with Lento Takako. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2013.

Selected Translations: 19482011. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2013.

Contents

Audience / 1956

David Ossman / 1961

Gregory Fitz Gerald and William Heyen / 1968

Michael Clifton / 1980

Ed Folsom and Cary Nelson / 1981

Daniel Bourne / 1982

David L. Elliott / 1984

Edward Hirsch / 1986

Dinitia Smith / 1995

Michael Ondaatje, Sam Solecki, and Linda Spalding / 1998

John Amen / 2003

Bill Moyers / 2009

Ed Rampell / 2010

Hal Crimmel / 2012

Introduction

At age eighty-eight, William Stanley Merwin is arguably the most venerated and distinguished living poet in the United States whose conversations have not yet been gathered in the renowned interview series published by the University Press of Mississippi. A major link between the period of literary modernism and its contemporary extensionswhatever label one wants to affix to themthis oversight is all the more surprising given the trajectory of a career that is already in its ninth decade. Beginning with short hymns to accompany his fathers services as a Presbyterian minister, Merwin has been writing poetry since childhood, and he has been cultivating that craft to this very day, retreating each morning into his private writing space to contemplate and write. The result, by last count, is about twenty volumes of original poetry, each with the integrity of a French cathedral or, to speak with a metaphor even more in the spirit of Merwin, with the balance of a living ecosystem. Merwin writes