Реферат: An Online Interview With W S Merwin

An Online Interview With W. S. Merwin Essay, Research Paper

from Artful Dodge

Daniel Bourne: Your poem on Berryman last night was interesting. It seemed

rather un-Merwinlike, a very traditional focus, little elliptical movement. Is this a kind

of departure, something new, or a return to the roots of an earlier literature, with that

kind of poem?

W.S. Merwin: I have no idea. I don’t have any ideological sense of what is

Merwinlike or un-Merwinlike. I’m always happy to find I’m writing a poem which is

different from anything I’ve written before, but I don’t think you can really write out a

paradigm. To be surprised is to find new directions and new regions you haven’t been into

yet, to be surprised by your own writing,that’s what I would always be hoping for.

DB: Does that poem surprise you more than any other poem you’ve written

recently?

Merwin: No. I don’t feel that very much about my own writing. I very much don’t

want to repeat myself or imitate myself or find myself doing something I’ve already done

before. If anything feels as if that’s what’s happening, then I try to move away from it.

DB: Do you see yourself coming from any springboard as a poet or translator? Did

you start with any firs principles or how long was it until they developed?

Merwin: Probably very few first principles. I started out realizing I didn’t

know very much and still don’t know very much. At some distance, translation obviously has

always been of great importance to writing to me. I went to see Ezra Pound when I was

nineteen or so. He told me something that I think I really already knew. He said that it

was important to regard writing as not a chance or romantic or inspired, (in the

occasional sense) thing, but rather a kind of spontaneity which arises out of discipline

and continual devotion to something; and translation is a way of keeping one close to what

one is doing, to the possibilities of one’s own language. I don’t translate very much

anymore but for years I tried to translate all the time, a certain amount, and just how

that’s affected my writing, I don’t know. I didn’t try to imitate while I was translating

or anything like that. The familiarity with one’s medium, a familiarity with language and

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