Word: merwin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Merwin's own work aims to "make something happen." He says, "I think that the idea of art for art's sake--it's OK, but it ends up with reacrame., You know, if you like reacrame, that's fine, but there's no reason why it should be supering in stamp collecting or anything else, and I don't think that's what poetry is about." He gestures a passing ambulance. "It's about life and death...
...Merwin's writing often focuses on ecological issues. "One of the things that's never separate any longer from anything I do is the relation of humans to the rest of life. I don't even like using words--I mean, I use them--but I don't even like using words like nature or the environment, because they assume that there's a separation, that there's us and then there's that...And dangerous, probably fatal, consequences arise from that and we see them all the time...
...Merwin speaks as he writes--in long strands of clauses. And he writes in imitation of the spoken word. "The main current in poetry," he says," and the kind of poetry that really matters to me can't ever lose that pole that's in the oral--it's in the spoken word." He doesn't punctuate his poetry for this reason...
When we sit on this park bench talking to each other," he says, "we don't put in little commas and colons and exclamation points. We don't need them, because we hear it." Merwin folds his sunglasses on his lap. "The closer words get to poetry, the more the spoken language is there. And that's not punctuated...
Early in his career, Merwin did use punctuation. He wrote in traditional forms, with traditional use of rhyme and meter. Critics make much of Merwin's formal shift...