W.S. Merwin as an Influential Writer of Poetry and Prose :: W.S. Merwin Essays

W.S. Merwin as an Influential Writer of Poetry and Prose Emergence At the day's end all our footsteps are added up to see how near. W.S. Merwin W.S. Merwin is an award-winning author of a wide variety of both poetry and prose books. He has served as a tremendous influence to me and has helped guide me along my writing journey. He inspires my best writing and has helped to shape my stylistics. I seek to follow in the footsteps of perhaps one of the most well known and popular poets of this century. W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in Union City, New Jersey, as well as Scranton, Pennsylvania (Merwin, Selected 279). From 1949 to 1951, Merwin was a world traveler, as he worked as a tutor in Portugal, France, and Majorca (Merwin, Selected 279). In addition to writing poetry, Merwin also wrote articles for The Nation as well as radio scripts for the BBC (Merwin, Selected 279). One of his most famous poetry books, The Carrier of Ladders, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 (Merwin, Selected 279). In addition to his books of poetry, he published three books of prose: The Miner's Pale Children, Houses and Travelers, and Unframed Originals. Merwin received many outstanding awards in his career including The Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets in 1974, and the Governor's Award for Literature of the State of Hawaii (Merwin, Selected 279). Merwin's writing style is unique from many other professional writers. "Merwin has been committed faithfully to the energies of fragmentation, erasure, and all those energies we identify as negative" ("Boston Review" 1). Because Merwin is able to use this technique so effectively, I attempt to follow in his footsteps and try some of it out on my own. Rick Jones and I used this idea in our collaborative poem, "pierced existence," in which we did not use proper capitalization or follow some of the most basic rules English rules. When I write in this style, I feel more relaxed because I do not have to be concerned with grammar and spelling. I am better able to concentrate on imagery and the use of words. Merwin's magisterial control of lyric syntax and narrative order give the reader no difficulty; they are able to understand his work since it flows free from form ("Boston Review" 1). "The consistency, the inclusive and transforming vitality of the work makes it the crowning achievement of Merwin's long and extremely diversified career" ("Boston Review" 1).