I did not fully appreciate Merwin’s book of poetry until I read the third and final section, which has a lot of poems involving growing old, the coming of autumn, and death. I am responding to the idea that Alysse brought up in her blog post about this theme, and I agree that I found this section a little depressing for it; I kept thinking, this incredible poet is extremely old and he’s talking about dying? However, after I listened to a number of interviews with him I fully appreciate his theme. In the interview with Merwin on NPR (which I now see is on the links page) he reads the poem “A Single Autumn,” about living in his parents’ old house for a period after they died. He said about his parents, “One of their greatest gifts to me was that neither of them turned out to be afraid of dying at all.” He says, “That is a great gift to be given, that feeling of no fear, and I think I inherited it from them very early.” When discussing his poem “Rain Light,” he says that the poem is about the world eventually coming to an end for humans, but that there is no point to fear and dread it, “which is a waste of time,” he adds. As an atheist and someone who is terrified of dying, I can’t say I share Merwin’s “gift” but I appreciate his view on death in these poems, and I think it’s important to realize when reading this section of his book; this incredible poet is extremely old, is talking about dying, and is fearless and contemplative on the subject, which makes very powerful poetry: “each star is roaring alone into the darkness / there is not a sound in the whole night” (103). His poems are both extremely powerful and very peaceful.
In another interview with him, a Reading with Naomi Shahib Nye, he talks about the unknown, which also encompasses his view of death. He says, “What we know is very remarkable, but it is a tiny part of the enormous, universal thing that is what we don’t know, what we never will know, and what is in every sense unknowable.” The ultimate unknowable is death, and Merwin is fascinated with the unknown; he compares what we know as “a hair floating in empty space—so small, so little, and deceptive, hiding what you don’t know” that sometimes you can’t see the huge space around you, although you have some connection with it. In the interview, he says the ultimate unknown is death, something that we can’t even perceive because it is so far out in “space” that our floating-hair-of-knowledge can’t even comprehend it. He says the closest way to get to the unknown is by the imagination: “the imagination moves closer to the unknown, and comes out of the unknown.” His poems do just this in the third section of his book; meditative about endings, of seasons and life, reaching out to space: “nothing is to be heard but the drops falling / one at a time from the tips of the leaves / into the night and I lie in the dark / listening to what I remember / while the night flies on with us into itself” (93).
Last thought: if you haven’t heard Merwin read his poetry yet, google him! This also made me appreciate his poetry even more.
NPR interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103317326
“A Reading with Naomi Shahib Nye” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aNeNNtPQWc
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