W.S. Merwin’s Passing

W.S. Merwin has passed away at the age of 91. In the early 90’s when we first started our Zen Center of Hawaii in Kamuela (Waimea) on the Big Island of Hawaii, he came and gave a wonder poetry reading at our Zen Center. He was a formidable poet who had left behind a large and evocative body of work such as “The Rain in the Trees”, “The Shadow of Sirius”, “The Moon Before Morning” and many more. Here is one small example . . . Berryman by W. S. Merwin I will tell you what he told me in the years just after the war as we then called the second world war don't lose your arrogance yet he said you can do that when you're older lose it too soon and you may merely replace it with vanity just one time he suggested changing the usual order of the same words in a line of verse why point out a thing twice he suggested I pray to the Muse get down on my knees and pray right there in the corner and he said he meant it literally it was in the days before the beard and the drink but he was deep in tides of his own through which he sailed chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop he was far older than the dates allowed for much older than I was he was in his thirties he snapped down his nose with an accent I think he had affected in England as for publishing he advised me to paper my wall with rejection slips his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled with the vehemence of his views about poetry he said the great presence that permitted everything and transmuted it in poetry was passion passion was genius and he praised movement and invention I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write.