Reading W.S. Merwin in a New Century

This edited collection explores the work of highly awarded and twice American Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin. Spanning Merwin’s early career, his mid-career success, his Hawaiian epic, his eco-poetry, his lesser-known later poetry and the influence of Buddhism on his work, the volume offers new perspectives on Merwin as a major poet. Exploring his works across the twentieth and twenty-first century, this collection presents Merwin as a necessary and contemporary poet. It emphasizes contemporary readings of Merwin as an environmental advocate, showing how his poetry seeks to help each reader re-establish an intimate relationship with the natural world. It also highlights how Merwin’s work presents our place in history as a pivotal moment of transition into a new era of international cooperation. This volume both celebrates his life and writing and takes scholarship on his work forward into the new century.

“This is a pioneering study of Merwin which will become essential reading for anyone in the field.  It works as an introductory text to those who are fairly unfamiliar with Merwin yet also has much to say to those who are informed about his work and overall career.  It is notably strong on Merwin’s affinities with other poets and the essays are well-organised, into sections on affinities/influence, the significance of Zen and eco-poetic, the craft of poetry, and apocalypticism.” (Stephen Matterson, Professor of English, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)

“This new book of exciting essays is an important intervention in Merwin scholarship, contributing to a reflowering of interest in Merwin's poetry.” (Steven Gould Axelrod, University of California, Riverside, USA)

“In her introduction to this important volume, Cheri Colby Langdell recognizes W. S. Merwin as a poet who devoted his life and work to doing all “he could do to save as many lives as possible— animal, plant and human.” The contributors then illuminate that lifesaving labor with insightful investigations into Merwin’s ways of drawing on his poetic predecessors, his central themes and concerns, his refinement of poetic craft, and the culmination of his vision in his late work. Reading W.S. Merwin in a New Century includes discussion of favorite poems such as ‘For the Anniversary of My Death’, ambitious books such as The Folding Cliffs, and such points of life/work contact as trees and Zen. As political and environmental conditions continue to intensify, W. S. Merwin appears increasingly prescient, and his work proves increasingly salient. Langdell’s book tracks that prescience and salience from its last-century origins to its this-century, this-moment relevance.” (H. L. Hix, University of Wyoming, USA)

“This wonderfully edited collection of essays helps us to recognise the lasting influence of Merwin’s investment in tradition, environmental activism, and poetic craft. It cementsMerwin’s place in the pantheon of American poets.” (Anthony Caleshu, University of Plymouth, UK)“William Merwin, with his fifty books of prose and poetry, and his many translations, was of significant importance to me and the poets of our generation. Someone once said that his work is a river that stretches all the way back to Han Shan and Li Po in the eighth century. I applaud this groundbreaking, adventurous exploration of Merwin’s oeuvre, which affords original perspectives on and fresh insights into all his work. These essays open up a clearer understanding of Merwin’s poetry and its embodiment of Zen, encompassing his work in translation and his many later books of poetry.” (Henry Shukman, Spiritual Director, Mountain Cloud Zen Center, New Mexico, USA)

“The signal concentration of care and attentiveness that animates W. S. Merwin’s work renders the familiar as something unexpected, often unpredictable, yet always recognizable. This form of renewal, for Merwin, is whatthe art of poetry offers the world he loved. His own poems, so often engaged with Nature with a capital “N”, ask questions that only seem more urgent as we move ever deeper into our new century. This welcome collection of essays proposes some fresh and timely answers. Its greatest contribution will be to bring new readers to Merwin, or old ones back to him. In that sense, it is a guidebook to being human in an imperiled time.” (M R Hofer, University of New Mexico, USA)

“This informed, affectionate and wide–ranging collection of original essays makes the case for the distinctiveness – and the importance – of W.S. (Bill) Merwin’s poetry. As Michael Thurston’s terrific treatment of Merwin’s “late” work points out, his was an expansive career, spanning some seven decades, a plethora of genres and an ever–evolving succession of ethical, historical and environmental concerns. The essays in this collection show Merwin learning his craft (sometimes via peers such as Berryman or Williamsand sometimes, as Diederik Oostdijk convincingly suggests, through immersion in European literatures, languages and landscapes). And they show him developing his own distinctive voice and form – mutedly elegiac, as open to silence as to speech, and willing, as Amanda Golden shows in her compelling account of his tussles with the New Yorker, to jettison punctuation to achieve the necessary effect. This excellent collection carves out a space for Merwin among the leading figures, interests and achievements of post–war American poetry and, like the best books of its kind, shows us the way back to the work.” (Jo Gill, University of Exeter, UK)

“The range of essays in Reading W. S. Merwin in the New Century begins the work of appraising the full scope of Merwin's transformative contributions to American poetics. In the wake of Merwin's death in 2019, these scholarly essays begin the process of arranging his life's work, to paraphrase Yeats, into one clear view; Merwin's rigorous craft, his outsized role in the histories of American ecopoetry and spiritual poetics, and the intricate circuitry of his literary networks come into sharp focus in these careful critical appraisals. The contributions on Merwin's late work flesh out the particular significance of the "last fires" of his creative life within the great arc of an extraordinary oeuvre. This is essential Merwin reading.” (Nikki Skillman, Indiana University, USA)

“Reading W.S. Merwin in a New Century renews and deepens my appreciation of this extraordinary poet. All his deepest concerns are represented here, including the Vietnam War, Heraclitus' philosophy, Zen koans, and Hawaiian natural history and origin narratives. Congratulations to editor Cheri Colby Langdell for assembling such a fine collection, one that fully testifies to Merwin's generous poetic achievement and fortifies the reader to confront the perils of our own era.” (Susan Suntree, East Los Angeles College, USA)

“Capacious, erudite, and truly mind-expanding. . .W.S. Merwin reimagined for the twenty-first century.” (James Penner, East Los Angeles College, USA)

“Merwin’s work, whose subject over the course of sixty years moves from place to displacement, then to all-encompassing place, might finally be seen as a diasporic voice in search of a natural world not maimed by industry, greed, and the commodification of desire. No other poet has so keenly depicted the Anthropocene Era’s ghost memories. Merwin’s originary and mythic voice is well-charted here, from the early influences of Yeats, Pound, and Graves, to his reverence for animals and the natural world, along with his path of dispossession and radiant sense of love . .” (Mark Irwin, University of Southern California, USA)

“W. S. Merwin has long been considered a major figure in the development of post-1945 American poetry, but his work is ripe for critical assessment by a new generation of scholars. Coming close on the heelsof his passing in 2019, this timely collection does just that. Cheri Colby Langdell has convened an impressive array of scholars who consider the full range of Merwin’s writing, early and late. Examining Merwin in a variety of contexts -- including his relationship to key precursors and contemporaries, his formal innovations, his fascination with Buddhism, and especially his deep, complex engagement with the natural world – this rich and illuminating collection takes stock of Merwin’s achievement and testifies to the ongoing relevance and importance of his work.” (Andrew Epstein, Florida State University, USA)

Cheri Colby Langdell, a member of the Emily Dickinson International Society, the Modernist Studies Association, and the Pacific Association of Ancient and Modern Languages, has published in the Emily Dickinson Journal and is the author of W.S. Merwin (1981) and Adrienne Rich: The Moment of Change (2004), as well as other books, reviews and articles. She has taught at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Southern California, and in the UK at the University of Nottingham, the University of Leicester, Birkbeck University of London and Queen Mary University of London. She now teaches at East Los Angeles College and Los Angeles Valley College, USA.