Understanding W.S. Merwin

In this companion to the works of W. S. Merwin, H. L. Hix surveys the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet's canon to show that despite its reputation for difficulty and obscurity, Merwin's verse is clear and direct. Describing Merwin as a moral poet, Hix identifies the characteristics that distinguish Merwin's voice and suggests that an underlying vision of human interconnectedness and affinity with nature permeates his poetry. Through close readings of Merwin's verse, Hix traces the emergence of the poet's dominant thematic concerns. Beginning with the interest in myth found in A Mask for Janus, Green with Beasts, and Writings to an Unfinished Acccompaniment, he shows how the thematic focus turns successively to apocalypse, ecology, and society, until Merwin arrives at one theme that incorporates all the others: the theme of place. Hix demonstrates that whether writing the angry protest poems of The Lice or the intimate family reminiscences of Opening the Hand, Merwin maintains the consistent premise that our isolation from each other and our isolation from the natural world are parallel and interrelated.