poem-a-days that mention poet W.S. Merwin
Hello Friends,
Do you have a hardest day? I don't know if there will ever come a time when April 13 isn't the hardest day of the year for me. It is a day when I am forced to face myself. I have known the greatest joys of my life on April 13ths — which I live in fear of never finding again — and April 13 has also been the worst day of my life. All these years later, there is still so much about this day I have not found the words or the courage to write about — and that is the topic of today's poem: the unwritten.
Notice that W.S. Merwin uses no punctuation. He's written entire books with no punctuation, and yet his meaning is still perfectly clear. I find that kind of craft remarkable — like the great Buddhist temples erected without using a single nail.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught
they're hiding
they're awake in there
dark in the dark
hearing us
but they won't come out
not for love not for time not for fire
even when the dark has worn away
they'll still be there
hiding in the air
multitudes in days to come may walk through them
breathe them
be none the wiser
what script can it be
that they won't unroll
in what language
would I recognize it
would I be able to follow it
to make out the real names
of everything
maybe there aren't
many
it could be that there's only one word
and it's all we need
it's here in this pencil
every pencil in the world
is like this
■
Poems by W.S. Merwin were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 4, 2016, Poem-a-Day April 16, 2010; Poem-a-Day April 9, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 17, 2008; and Poem-a-Day April 7, 2007.
Hello Friends,
Since yesterday’s poem-a-day was about giving, today’s poem-a-day will cover saying thank you. The remarkable poet W.S. Merwin manages to convey his meaning without using punctuation, not just in today’s poem but in nearly his entire 50+ years worth of work.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
■
Poems by W.S. Merwin were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 16, 2010; Poem-a-Day April 9, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 17, 2008; and Poem-a-Day April 7, 2007.
I find Gabriel García Márquez occupying the space in my thoughts where poetry month should be this evening. But Márquez didn’t think very highly of his own early forays into poetry — so I am not going to embarrass him by sharing them, even if I think they were quite good.
Instead, a poem that García Márquez loved all his life: one story goes that a teenage “Gabo” got in trouble with the jesuit fathers in secondary school for memorizing Pablo Neruda’s “Poema XX” and reciting it several times a day. Fittingly, Neruda was just a teenager himself when he wrote “Poema XX,” published in his poetry collection Viente poemas de amor y una canción de desesperada / Twenty Love Poems and One Song of Despair in 1924, when Neruda was just 19 years old (and three years before Gabriel García Márquez was born).
Later in life, García Márquez would call Neruda “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” Neruda, in turn, had the chance to call Márquez’s most famous novel, Cien años de soledad / One Hundred Years of Solitude, “the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since Don Quixote.”
Enjoy.
Ellen
| XX PUEDO ESCRIBIR
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche. Escribir, por ejemplo: «La noche está estrellada, El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta. Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche. En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos. Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería. Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche. Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella. Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla. Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos. |
XX TONIGHT I CAN WRITE
Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms. She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. What does it matter that my love could not keep her. This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. |
Pablo Neruda was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 13, 2007.
W.S. Merwin’s English translation of Neruda’s Viente poemas de amor y una canción de desesperada, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, was first published in 1969.
Ash
The church in the forest
was built of wood
the faithful carved their names by the doors
same names as ours
soldiers burned it down
the next church where the first had stood
was built of wood
with charcoal floors
names were written in black by the doors
same names as ours
soldiers burned it down
we have a church where the others stood
it’s made of ash
no roof no doors
nothing on earth
says it’s ours
Hello Friends,
Today’s poem comes from the works of W.S. Merwin, who has been eschewing punctuation quite successfully in his poetry for over 50 years — except to dot his own initials.
“Ash” first appeared in his 1973 collection Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment, and is also included in his Selected Poems (1988). You can listen to Merwin read “Ash” to you himself during a great KQED radio interview from a few years ago. And you remember that website I told you about, the Academy of American Poets? They have some pretty neat videos of poets talking about poetry, including W.S. Merwin here.
In 1971, Merwin famously dedicated his Pulitzer Prize money to opposing the Vietnam War. He moved to Hawai’i in 1976 to study Zen Buddhism and currently lives on Maui, on a former pinapple plantation that he has labored to restore to its original rainforest state. He continues to write poetry, plays, memoirs, short and long prose, and translations and won the Pultizer Prize in Poetry again just last year.
Best,
Ellen
“Ash” by W.S. Merwin was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 7, 2007.
Poems by W.S. Merwin were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 17, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 9, 2009.
Something I’ve not done
is following me
I haven’t done it again and again
so it has many footsteps
like a drumstick that’s grown old and never been used
In late afternoon I hear it come close
at times it climbs out of a sea
onto my shoulders
and I shrug it off
losing one more chance
Every morning
it’s drunk up part of my breath for the day
and knows which way
I’m going
and already it’s not done there
But once more I say I’ll lay hands on it
tomorrow
and add its footsteps to my heart
and its story to my regrets
and its silence to my compass
— W.S. Merwin
Teachers
Pain is in this dark room like many speakers
of a costly set though mute
as here the needle and the turning
the night lengthens it is winter
a new year
what I live for I can seldom believe in
who I love I cannot go to
what I hope is always divided
but I say to myself you are not a child now
if the night is long remember your unimportance
sleep
then toward morning I dream of the first words
of books of voyages
sure tellings that did not start by justifying
yet at one time it seems
had taught me
***
Hello Friends,
“Teachers” is from The Carrier of Ladders (1970) by W.S. Merwin, one of the most punctuation-free poets.
When The Carrier of Ladders won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971, Merwin donated 100% of the prize money (all $1,000) to anti-war efforts.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Poems by W.S. Merwin were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 7, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 9, 2009; and Poem-a-Day April 16, 2010.
Ash
The church in the forest
was built of wood
the faithful carved their names by the doors
same names as ours
soldiers burned it down
the next church where the first had stood
was built of wood
with charcoal floors
names were written in black by the doors
same names as ours
soldiers burned it down
we have a church where the others stood
it’s made of ash
no roof no doors
nothing on earth
says it’s ours
*
Hello Friends —
Today’s poem comes from the punctuation-free works of W.S. Merwin, in his 1973 collection Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
“Ash” by W.S. Merwin was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 16, 2010.
Poems by W.S. Merwin were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 17, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 9, 2009.