News > April 24, 2008

By CeCe Brooks | Life editor

On April 22, at Reynolda House, William Stanley Merwin, 81, usually referred to as W.S. Merwin, read a number of poems. He began the reading with the work of another poet, a practice Merwin says he likes to employ before all of his readings.

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Pulitzer prize-winning poet W.S. Merwin both read to and conversed with his audience April 22 at Reynolda House. (Photo courtesy of www.english.txstate.edu)

Merwin is widely known as a poet, but he has written in prose as well as being a respected translator of works.

Among other awards, Merwin has won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

He is known for writing pieces that are deeply connected to natural elements, both animals and the environment.

“When we wake up and yawn in the morning, that’s in the environment … none of this is separate from the world around us. We’ve made mistakes because we believed we were separate from nature,” he said at one point during the reading.

Merwin’s reading was the last in the university’s Dillon Johnston Writers Reading Series which collaborates with the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Kenan Writers’ Encounters series.

The event was also sponsored by the E.E. Folk Fund administrated by journalism professor Wayne King.

The evening began in a packed Babcock Auditorium with the North Carolina School of the Arts introducing the series and Merwin.

It was mentioned that a documentary had recently been made by Larry Cameron, University of South Carolina head of media services.

The documentary looks at Merwin’s praised arboretum in Hawaii, where he currently lives, while interviewing Merwin himself.

Upon reaching the podium, Merwin mentioned never having been to Winston-Salem and briefly discussed his plan for the reading.

Merwin began reading his poetry in chronological order, starting in the 1960s with poems from his collection The Lice.

He read a few “winter” poems and then “The Last One,” which he said was a “storied” poem.

As a side note he mentioned the fact that many stories were originally told in the form of poems.

He then read a few poems he said he was asked to read: “For the Anniversary of my Death” and “For a Coming Extinction.”

He wrote “For a Coming Extinction” in what he called a “sense of helpless desperation” upon learning that the Mexican government planned to build a bridge to Baja, California that would endanger the great whale in the Sea of Cortez; he described it as an “angry poem.”

Between each poem, Merwin often introduced it with the context in which it was written.

Before reading one poem he mentioned his appreciation for bugs.

“There are a number of poems about bugs. Bugs are very important,” he said.

“I thought ‘Why aren’t fleas part of mythology?’ So I wrote a poem about fleas.”

Throughout the reading, Merwin expressed his passion for the earth and its creatures both in his speech and in the poems themselves.

“When we talk about the loss of species, I think about the loss of languages,” he said before he read “Chord.”

Merwin then read some poems from The Vixen, which he said evolved from a poem related to Roman elegy into an entire collection about a place in France where he lived at one time.

He read “To the Soul,” “To Age” and “To the Words” which was written the days after September 11 from his last published book, Present Company.

The remainder of the reading was from his new manuscript that is being published in September.

He said that it is in three sections with the “middle section entirely made up into elegies.”

Before reading “My Dog,” he discussed new idea of expressing deep feelings for animals, which many think are reserved for communication between people.

His last poem of the night was “May I call Upon the Laughing Dash,” which he said is the last poem in the unnamed manuscript.

Merwin ended the night with a book signing and reception in the Reynolda House.