Portrait without a Frame: the Poetry of W. S.

Merwin
A context for W. S. Merwin
The evident diversity and complexity of the poetic output in USA after World
War II are so great that one can find it necessary to undertake a serious
systematization, in the general sense of the word, efore setting out to attempt a
proper study of it! A numer of poetic trends, currents, directions, "schools,#
tendencies and generations may e traced within this variety, such as$ "confessional#
school, "pro%ectivist# school, "eat# generation, etc! &owever, despite this plurality of
poetic expression, one can arrive at a conclusion that there is still a common
denominator, which provides a link among them$ courageous inventiveness and
imagination, ringing great freshness to the poetic expression, and a passionate,
immanent urge, toward experiment! It has therefore een noted that the American
poetry in the post'war period was rimming with ground'reaking poetic concepts
and ideas that deservedly gave it a very high, if not leading position among the
national poetic traditions in the world!
It is exactly this turulent and yet, fertile time and context in the development
of American poetry that saw the appearance of William Stanley (erwin, the poet
who, together with the generation of poets orn etween )*+,'-,, largely contriuted
to the creation of new, postmodern sensiility! This generation of young poets
managed, on one hand, to move away from the sensiility of the modernist tradition
of T! S! .liot and .! /ound and, on the other hand, to assimilate its values in the
process, thus enriching it with new experiences that inevitaly emerged from the war
and from the swift development of the American society after the war! 0onse1uently,
this generation of poets tried to introduce a different kind of articulation of the poetic
material in a new, raw, much more virulent language, and at the same time
incorporate in their poetic endeavour, "in their ones# 2as T! S! .liot would have put
it3, a significant amount of knowledge aout the .uropean poetic experience! 4e it as
it may, in the course of our attempt to provide any kind of systematization of the post'
war trends and currents in the American poetry we will soon realize that there are
several poets whose work escapes classification and re%ects to lean upon any kind of
poetic "school# or trend! 5ne of these poets 6 "free'lancers#, in our opinion, is our
poet laureate W! S! (erwin!
How to be an American poet
"4efore I turned twenty I often wondered what it meant to e an American
poet, as well as what makes a poet, thinking of myself, to e an American poet,# says
(erwin in his essay entitled as "What Is American in the American /oetry,# and adds
that in the attempt to answer the 1uestion he often had in mind the fact that most of
the great American poets of the +,
th
century spent various spans of time in self'
imposed exile in .urope, especially in the period etween the two world wars, and
after WWII! Such poets 2esides T! S! .liot and .zra /ound3 were William 0arlos
Williams, 7oert 8owell, Theodore 7ethke, 7andall 9arell, 9ohn 4erryman, and many
others! :ow it seems irrelevant to wonder whether their self'imposed exile meant an
attempt on their ehalf to look for their poetic roots outside the relatively short
American poetic tradition, or to try to ac1uire their poetic skills directly from the
source of the .uropean avant'garde, which in the aove'mentioned period, was
mainly located in pre'war .urope! ;ollowing their example, (erwin very early in his
life, when only ++, in )*<* left for .urope where he stayed for a period of seven years
during which he focused on the .uropean poetic experiences y carefully studying
and translating them into .nglish! It is necessary to say that in the process of learning
the poetic "trade# he did not consider only the Anglo'Saxon literary tradition, ut also
the 7enaissance Italian, /roven=al, Spanish and /ortuguese traditions! &is
"apprenticeship# in the .uropean poetic workshop was motivated and encouraged y
two excellent authorities in that domain$ the first one, a controversial and incuraly
curious American in exile, .zra /ound, and the second one, an impecaly analytical
researcher of the ancient mythological matrices, the great 4ritish from (a%orca,
7oert >raves! The young (erwin almost intuitively sensed that the American poetic
tradition shouldn?t e treated and accepted as a "homogenized addendum or se1uel to
the .nglish tradition,# and therefore from the start oif his poetic career he consciously
wanted to redirect his experience from the native American examples and phenotypes
.merson and Whitman, to the .uropean classical authors like &omer, @ergil, Aante,
and the /roven=al trouvres Aaniel Arnaut, ;rancois @illon, etc!
Hybridization as an individuaization of the poetic experience
This conscious tendency and determination towards hyridization of the
American and the .uropean traditions in his individual poetic experience resulted
primarily in the first poetry volumes pulished y W! S! (erwin! A Mask for Janus
2)*B+3, for instance, is a mature and complete poetic adventure oth, thematically and
technically speaking! :aturally, the poetry in this ook he presents himself with for
the first time to the readership and the critics, is closely related to the modernist
tradition and, at the same time, is a wonderful example for a rich and stunningly
diverse use of metrical devices! It seems as if (erwin wanted to persuade his readers
that he managed to graduate from the .uropean poetic workshop cum laude!
0onse1uently, in this ook he displays a great variety of experiments with old,
traditional forms such as rhymes, allads, roundels, odes, elegies, epitaphs, canzones,
etc! (erwin?s copious poetic talent is shown through the Italian graciousness and
elegance of his verse, through the trouadour'like ornamental elaoration and the
complex, ut pleasing ;rench metrical harmony! Therefore, one can rightfully claim
that (erwin did not enter the American poetic tradition as a momentary impulse, ut
rather as a poet who was well ac1uainted with the craft of writing poetry, its
techni1ues and strategies! &owever, this fact aout how learned the young poet was
also points to an "anomaly,# which was atypical for the poets of his generation, i!e! his
hesitation, even fear to reak with the old, traditional patterns and canons in which he
feels 1uite comfortale and safe! It can also e understood as fear of disintegration of
an entire carefully designed thematic complex and painfully elaorated atmosphere!
4ut at the same time he makes us aware that samo onie koi znaat sto e tradici%a, mozat
svesno da raskinat so nea 2vidi .liot3! The vocaulary the poet uses in this and in the
following three ooks of poetry 2he later grouped them in one collection called The
First Four Books 2esides A Mask for Janus it also includes The Dancing Bears,
Green with Beasts, Drunk in the Furnace3 and thus separated them altogether from
those that came later3, is rather .liotes1ue$ "dry,# emotionally detached, even cold,
full of intellectual oservations and statements! In extreme cases, it is purposely
rought to superfluous perfection in order that it gives the poem a specific rhetorical
1uality and tone that offers no emotional persuasion and sincerity, which is yet
another remarkale feature of the modernist tradition la .zra /ound and T! S! .liot!
The poems in these ooks are mainly narrative, and in comination with the
mythological matrices upon which they are mostly ased, they achieve an almost
surreal atmosphere!
Myth as an ironica !"uest for order#
(yth for (erwin has always een of special importance, ut never as much as
in his creative youth! This has clearly een pointed out y W! &! Auden in his preface
to (erwin?s first ook of poems! According to Auden, the young poet uses myth for
generating a special symolical charge in his poems! 5ther critics also rightfully
notice that (erwin uses myth in his poetry as a asis for his "1uest for order# 20!
(alkoff3! :evertheless, this "1uest for order# in (erwin?s poetry has a very peculiar
and unexpected direction whose final destination is the heart of chaos! &is system of
symols, however 2if it is a "system# at all3, has neither the intention nor the
determination to e complex, rigorously structured and complete, as is the case with
W! 4! Ceats? symolic system, for example, nor it has a detailed, although seemingly
fragmentary, ut structuralizing or unifying, compositional force, as is the case with
T! S! .liot?s! In the modernist pattern for myth appropriation (erwin finds a su'
context that has an important role in the creation of the tropological design of his
poetry as well as the creation of specific atmosphere in it! (erwin deconstructs the
classical mythological matrices y supplementing, or rather, inculcating the anal
everyday reality in them, so that the effect of this process in his poetry is that of
constant and ironical deferral, postponement of the ultimate encounter etween myth
and reality, etween the traditional metrics and form and the contemporary expression
and sensiility! This deferral of the symiosis or final resolution of the asic
oppositions in his poetry, does not allow the poem to ecome an enclosed, organic
kernel, ut leaves it open$ (erwin?s poems are not cells, nuclei, ut processes of
discovery as they happen! That is why, his poems are at the same time illusory and
real, universal and everyday, oneiric and existentialD they are poems that remind us
constantly of the fall, of the loss of our divine ignorance and innocence, and of our
great gain of mundane mortality! &e says$
So strav od itrata ptica {to klika i gleda
Vo ovie plimi i temni utrobi na navednatite
Proroci nad ogromnite moriwa
Nie barame nova dimenzija za svetot.
No osudeni se vremiwata {to gi znaeme.
The general feature that separates (erwin?s first four ooks from any form of
modernism and that traces the path of his other ooks that come afterwards, is the
attempt on his ehalf to overcome the anaesthetic, futile atmosphere which is present
in most of the works of the modernist poets after the appearance of T! S! .liot?s great
modernist paradigm, The aste !and, which stood for a long time as a pattern
according to which not only poetry, ut also criticism was modeled in a way that it a
"riori condemned any attempt to depart from that kind of poetics as lasphemous
poetic dilettantism and amateurism!
;ollowing the spirit that slowly ut decisively undermined the dogmatically
understood modernist poetics that appeared in >reat 4ritain and in America 2one can
certainly recall some of the poets who originated this pro%ect, such as /hilip 8arkin,
Tom >unn, Ted &ughes, Silvia /lath, 7oert 8owel, Allan >inserg, 9ohn Ashurry,
9ohn 4erryman, etc!3, W! S! (erwin does not set out to create any dramatis "ersonae
in his poetry like /rufrock or (auerley who, reflecting the crisis in the period
etween the two world wars, are actually examples of anti'heroes, of depersonalized,
hollow and petrified individuals, perfect intellectual noodies, motionless onlookers,
suffocated and terrified y the disenchanted crowds! Instead of them, (erwin
repositions the poet in the midst of the poem to ear stoically what the day rings$ all
kinds of surprises, disillusionment, happiness, etc! Therefore, (erwin is not an
escapist poet, he does not turn away from reality, which ecomes more and more
complex and chaotic, ut accepts its challenges, no matter whether they are in the
form of despair, alienation, lost frame of mind, or in the form of primal drives,
outursts of euphoria, natural catastrophes caused y the destructive human attitude
towards nature, etc!
$he poem as a process of namin%
(erwin?s first four ooks of poetry are evidently a process of preparation for
much more daring and innovative poetic gestures in the direction of the poet?s further
lieration from the limitations imposed y the traditional forms and the so'called
"great# themes! In that sense W! S! (erwin?s efforts are mainly focused on two
issues$ firstly, the issue of the use of formal linguistic means 2rearrangement of the
line, i!e! the syntax of the poem, the nonEuse of punctuation, the tonal variations of
voice, etc!3, and secondly, the issue of understanding the poem as a process of naming
or re'creating the world and the reality! As for these two aspects, they ecome evident
in the collections Moving Target and !ice! These are perhaps the most peculiar and at
the same time, the most influential poetry volumes pulished in America during F,s!
As already mentioned, in these two ooks W! S! (erwin finds uni1ue ways to avoid
the formal poetic patterns and the limitations imposed y punctuation, whuch was
evident even in his previous ooks! These two ooks are a triumph of the poet in the
end of his arduous and adventurous %ourney towards the poetic freedom and the
"open# poem! &e strips the poem offD he fragments it to extremes, so that the reader
has the feeling that his poem flows out of its own form y itself and along its own
eds of meaning! Although the reader is faced with the difficulty of gathering the
codes of the poem into a handful of meaning, with every new reading heEshe is slowly
comes to the understanding that the poem has not at all fallen apart with the sudden
reak of the lines and with the unpredictale inner caesuras, and that the syntax of W!
S! (erwin is still vigorous and stale!
This attitude of the poet towards the line and its formal structure has its aim to
generate as much meaning with minimum words as possile and to open the poem for
more than one readings and interpretations! ;reed from punctuation the lines comine
and recomine, thus ecoming polyvalent in meaning, whereas the images they carry
in themselves directly pass into the imagination of the reader! The seemingly
ungrammatical language and the use of a numer of participle constructions is yet
another element that makes (erwin?s verse look illogical and asurd on the surface!
The second issue to which W! S! (erwin dedicates enormous energy is to
transform the poem into a process of naming or poetic re'creation of the world, i!e! a
process of re'examining, re'discovering and new understanding of reality on ehalf of
the speaking su%ect in the poem, no matter whether it coincides with the poet?s "self#
or it is a "recounted# or transferred experience y some other "self#! In this way the
poem turns into a kind of "epistemological discovery of the experience!# The
speculation, the process of the poet?s thinking is at the same time oth, a rhetorical
means and a su%ect of the poem itself! 0onse1uently, the poem creates an "artistic
simulacrum of the process of speculation# 28! Ivanovska3, or to make it simpler$ the
poem writes itself in the process of its discovery and naming of the experience and the
world! As a result of this the poems in the later periods of W! S! (erwin?s poetic
career, as well as of his more recent collections, have as their own ars "oetica, the
effect of sudden revelations, epiphanic manifestations that have neither their
eginning nor their end, that have "always already# started to happen efore, a# illo
tem"ore! ;or that reason the reader is re1uired to have a creative attitude towards
them, i!e! to imagine their eginning or their and to %oin the poet in his ecstatic or
euphoric, despondent or gloomy process of their re'creation and re'naming of the
world! Therefore, in his more recent ooks of poetry, every fragment that emerges
from them past, e it personal or collective, e it hidden or overt, is not %ust memory,
ut reification of the past in the present!
For the inner and outer ecoo%ica consciousness
Thematically speaking, the preoccupation of W! S! (erwin with the personal
and universal past is enriched with yet another great poetic theme$ the procuring of a
specific ecological consciousness accompanied y harsh criticism of the destructive
human attitude towards nature! A good numer of his poems are dedicated to the sea,
the cradle and the urial site of life, to that originary ecological environment where in
the purest 2ut perhaps the cruelest3 manner unravel the most vital cyclic processes of
creation and destruction, of irth and death, of the most universal symol in all
literature, as GGGGGGG! 21uote3
The personal past of the poet, asks from him a complete departure from the
detached, impersonal poetic discourse and emracing a more confessional idiom! The
great American poets 7oert 8owell, 9ohn 4erryman and Allan >inserg were
perhaps the peers in the ma%or turn of the poetic mode of expression and diction in
>reat 4ritain and USA! &owever, W! S! (erwin never completely surrenders to the
explicitly personal and often exaggerated confessional expression! In his poems he
always leaves room, which is not filled with moral and psychological suffering or
personal dramas, disappointments and downfalls, ut the space of his poems is filled
with "a series of amiguous parales, clearly determined through grotes1ue, which
seems to e closer to pulic myth, than to a private nightmare# 2(alkoff3! Therefore,
W! S! (erwin asks his poems, his words, to save him from the chaos and darkness,
which the individual may fall into! &e says$
Jas sum bezimen jas sum podelen
jas sum nevidliv jas sum nedopirliv
i prazen
nomadite vo mene `iveat
bidete mi o~i
jazik i race
moj son i budewe
od aosot.
#ut each of us
has his own kingdom of "ains
and has not $et found them all
and is sailing in search of them da$ and night
infalli#le undis"uted unresting
filled with a dum# use
and its time
like a finger in a world without hands
The est example for such treatment of the personal in the poetry of W! S!
(erwin is perhaps to e found in his groundreaking collection !ice! It starts with a
riddle given to &omer to solve, ut he couldn?t! &ere is the riddle$ "What we caught
and killed remained ehind us, ut what is it that escaped from us, ut is still with
usH# The answer is 6 louse! The enigmatic 1uality of this parale ecomes clearer if
we understand that man constantly tries to suppress the other in himEherself, ut it,
naturally, is unale to do! The other in us is constantly lurking, hidden in the deepest
realms of our consciousness, waiting for the moment when, like the underground
spring in Ioneski?s "Sterna,# it would urst out from the darkness of our eing and
will flood it with chaos!
this is the terror
That cannot #e charted, this is onl$
A little of it
Therefore, the very personal, most often asurd fears that the poet is trying to come to
terms with and resolve are present in this collection and in the collections to come!
That is asically the main reason why the poems written during this period of
(erwin?s work resemle hallucinatory experiences in which nothing can keep its
form and content! The passion for naming for naming things here coincides with the
fear of naming anything! If the order etween the mythical and the ontological
reality is erased for the poet, then he chooses to remain in the great void of the
unnamed and therefore unknown, in the episteme of the "great ignorance,# which he
himself is to recognize, name and fill with meaning and knowledge!
21uote3
W! S! (erwin?s poetry in his most recent volumes not only succeeds to
achieve this idea of time and space as something unpredictale, slippery, and
inconstant, ut it also manages to introduce the poet into a world in which life is like
GG!! 21uote3! .xits from that world do not exist, and if there is one, than here is what
W! S! (erwin says aout it$
%n the door it sa$s what to do to survive
But we were not #orn to survive
%nl$ to live
Jul$, &''( &oran An'evs(i