Emily M's Response to Merwin

Merwin’s work had a lot themes running throughout that made his book very cohesive. As we discussed in class there were a number of instances where time was layer creating pasts within the past, and the present that had already become the past, all while looking to the future. There was more than that however, that tied his pieces together, such as his constant use of unknowns. Whether those unknowns came in the form of unnamed subjects or unanswerable questions he engaged the reader by suggesting these ideas and forcing them to find their own answers or create new question based off of the ones he had purposed himself. “Lake Shore in Half Light” is a good representation of this idea of an unknown question. He discusses remembering almost everything about the question, he seems to hint that this question is connected to his past by sharing the pieces of a specific memory that are assumable connected to his “question”. In the end however the reader is left without any real “answer” to what the question was.

Another theme I saw throughout this book was the importance of relationships. In almost every poem Merwin discusses some form of connection, most often between two people. The memories he shares with his reader he often shared with another person first hand. We are able to see these relationships in both his “literal” memories as well as his poems that are left open to interpretation. The poem “Going” I feel does a wonderful job of displaying Merwin’s feelings about connections with others, as well as taking a closer look at language on its own. His lines, “Only humans believe there is a word for goodbye we have one in every language one of the first words we learn”, I believe sum up how he recognizes the value of the bonds shared between people and how it translates throughout life and language.

Overall, I feel like The Shadow of Sirius was meant to be a book sharing Merwin’s life experiences, his thoughts and his beliefs accumulated over the years. His wisdom was put into every poem including the ones where he admitted to that he still had questions that have not and maybe cannot be answered. His writing style I think represents the stage he is at his life, where he is reflecting on his experiences and has reached a point of acceptance. It is about acceptance of the past, of experiences, memories, feelings, and what can’t be changed. He uses his age to his advantage I think, and creates a book that does not shove his knowledge at his reader but instead offers it as what it is his life. It is relatable while at the same time being unique to his life, and what he sees being the “cliff-notes”, the important moments and thoughts that made the difference and were important. He shares all of this with a veil fogging his memory, loosing details, and romanticizing some memories.

I feel like his work was effective for no other reason than he allowed people to draw their own conclusions and gave an individual experiences to every reader.