As it turns out, one of my all-time favorite
individuals, the poet W.S. Merwin, passed away in his sleep early that morning around the same time I woke from my dream.
The oddities of that juxtaposition aside, the devastation
came flooding back when I learned of W.S. Merwin’s death. I am hard pressed to
put into words what his work has meant for the world, for poetry, for me.
Arguably, he is one of the most decorated contemporary poets, having gathered
almost all the prominent accolades and awards during his long career.
But beyond the awards and acclaim, I think that he
likely had an uncelebrated and possibly unknown profound impact on hundreds of
thousands of individual little humans. Me, for one.
I purchased his book, The
Rain in the Trees, because it was required reading for a writing workshop
at Hamilton College. With the guidance of great professors, his was some of the
first poetry I worked to comprehend in any depth. He was the launch pad for a life-long pursuit. I hated
that feeling of not grasping exactly what was going on in his poems, but also luxuriated
in that same ambiguity. I loved the idea that each word could be dissected,
analyzed, listened to, and savored. Every word was enormously meaningful in a
poem - they were all placed there for a specific reason or, more likely,
hundreds of specific reasons.
As part of my Creative Writing major, I spent hours writing
poetry, always with a pencil and always the evening before the poem had to be
submitted for review by my classmates. The best part about the process was deliberating
over the “right” word. Those moments poring through the thesaurus, writing
down, crossing out, hemming, hawing and then finally feeling that tiny thrill
when the word “stuck.” Those moments were truly some of my favorite memories of
creating anything.
This isn’t a story of Merwin inspiring me to become a poet.
It’s a story of him inspiring everything. Of him being this beautiful thread in
my life, one that started in college, carried me through New York, accompanied
me through love and loss, and stuck with me so profoundly that we gave his name
to our dog, who was, as absolutely ridiculous as it sounds, one of the most
significant loves of my life. I used Merwin’s work and my love for the dog Merwin
to start this blog, a context for reestablishing the thrill of creating that I
hadn’t realized I had missed so dreadfully. I have never read another poet’s
work and had the same reactions, feelings, or utter awe and admiration for what he could do on a
page. I have never met so many of one poet’s works that absolutely just sang to
me.
I realized this past year, first with Paul Taylor’s passing
then with Mary Oliver’s that I hadn’t yet truly acknowledged the impact my artistic
icons have had on me. As silly as it may sound, I feel such a profound loss now
that this trifecta has moved on. These people shaped my interest in dance, in
poetry, in understanding people, in creating, and in savoring how words or
movement can brilliantly illuminate nature or grief or injustice or death in
ways that evoke such compelling feeling around what it means to see this world
and to be in this world. How amazing they were to share
this beauty with us and how utterly sad there will be no more of it from their great minds.
There is so much more to say about W.S. Merwin, likely so many more important things to thank him for and to relay around his life's work, but for now, it just feels like the Merwins' "absence has gone through me / like thread through a needle / everything I do is stitched with its color."