W.S. Merwin (1927- )

A selective list of online literary criticism for American poet and translator W.S. Merwin, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Web Sites

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Literary Criticism

Brunner, Edward J. Publisher's blurb for Poetry as Labor and Privilege: The Writings of W. S. Merwin (Univ. of Ill., 1991)

Bryson, J. Scott. "Seeing the West Side of Any Mountain: Thoreau and Contemporary Ecological Poetry." In Jack Magazine Issue 5. Also Publisher's blurb for Ecopoetry: A Critical Introduction (University of Utah Press, 2002) which covers Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, W. S. Merwin, and Wendell Berry

Cook, Albert. "Metrical inventions: Zukofsky and Merwin" in College Literature, Oct. 1997

Costello, Bonnie. "On poetry and the idea of nature" Nature in Merwin's "The Lice" and "Native," and in Marianne Moore. Daedalus, Winter 2003

Howard, Richard. A review of The Vixen by W. S. Merwin (Alfred A. Knopf) by poet Richard Howard, who compares it to Tennyson's In Memorium. In The Boston Review, Summer 1996

Frazier, Jane. "Lost Origins: W. S. Merwin's Poems of Division." Discusses W.S. Merwin and the natural world. "To Merwin, the ideological and physical distance between ourselves and nature that we have increasingly created has divided us from our most important psychic resource and the basis of our Being." In Weber Studies (Weber State Univ.) Spring/Summer 1997, Volume 14.2

Frazier, Jane. "Writing outside the self: the disembodied narrators of W.S. Merwin" - Rhetoric and Poetics. Style, Summer, 1996

Hix, H.L. Publisher's blurb for Understanding W.S. Merwin (Univ. of S. Carolina Press, 1997)

Lerner, Ben. A review of Migration: New and Selected Poems by W.S Merwin (Copper Canyon Press, 2005). "The publication of Migration: New and Selected Poems provides us with the opportunity to track in a single volume W.S. Merwin's evolution from traditional verse forms to unpunctuated lyrics that, at their best, seem to hover just above the page like heat above the highway." Jacket Magazine #28 (Oct. 2005)

Merwin, W.S. "Preface to East Window: The Asian Translations." From "Translating Asian Poetry: A Symposium." Manoa 11.2 (1999) 95-100

Nelson, Cary and Ed Folsom, eds. Publisher's blurb for W. S. Merwin: Essays on the Poetry (Univ. of Ill.)

Scigaj, Leonard. Publisher's blurb for Sustainable Poetry: Four Ecopoets (Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1999) Covers Wendell Berry, AR Ammons, WS Merwin, and Gary Snyder

Scigaj, Leonard. Review of Sustainable Poetry: Four Ecopoets in RMMLA,54.1 reviewed by A. Flinn, who notes that for Scigaj "deconstruction and its postmodern heirs are anathema to ecopoetry."

Smith, Jared. Review of Migration: New and Selected Poems. In The Pedestal Magazine, web, n.d

Introduction

An introduction to W.S. Merwin includes very brief excerpts of reputable critical discussions of some poems, from the Modern American Poetry Site (Univ. of Illinois)

The NY Times page on W.S. Merwin has Times reviews of his books from 1957-1993, along with some articles.

To sleep among icicles. On W.S. Merwin's "brave attempt to modernise Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." In the Guardian, February 21, 2004

A master gardener of verse [W.S. Merwin] In the Christian Science Monitor, 4/24/03, by Elizabeth Lund

In an audio clip Merwin discusses his memoir about his time in the French countryside. On NPR, 8/7/03

W.S. Merwin At The Village Voice: Postcard From Paris, from Poets & Writers magazine, 5/31/02

A review of The River Sound by W.S. Merwin (1999) "In an age of loss on every side, the loss of biological, cultural, and experiential diversity, no poet has more to offer us than W.S. Merwin. We can only begin the work of salvage or restoration by understanding the full extent of what we have lost and are losing. And here we have no more eloquent witness than W.S. Merwin." Reviewed by Jerry Bass in The Richmond Review.

Short introduction to Merwin from the Los Angeles Public Library "W.S. Merwin's recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held beliefs. He is not only profoundly anti-imperialist, pacifist, and environmentalist, but also possessed by an intimate feeling for landscape and language and the ways in which land and language interflow." March/April 2005

Anti-war activity 'Unacknowledged legislators': Poets Protest the War. In Monthly Review, April, 2003 by Sam Hamill, Sally Anderson, John J. Simon

Anti-war activity Poets Against the War: W.S. Merwin, Sam Hamill, Maxine Kumin, Alfred Corn & Rita Dove "The Nation presents a few of the works posted on "Poets Against the War" website set up by Sam Hamill, poet and editor, when he called for poems and statements against war in Iraq." February 19, 2003

"Poet W.S. Merwin Reads at Library of Congress" from the Library of Congress 9/22/97

An interview with Merwin conducted by Daniel Bourne and published at the Artful Dodge web site

A short introduction to the W.S. Merwin from the Academy of American Poets

"Merwin's newest spans 50 years" On the poems in Migration: New & Selected Poems, by W.S. Merwin, Copper Canyon Press. Review in Deseret News, Apr 3, 2005 by Dennis Lythgoe

"Merwin says poetry is all about listening." In Deseret News, Apr 3, 2005 by Dennis Lythgoe Deseret Morning News

W.S. Merwin page from his publisher Knopf, with blurbs on several of his books

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