[New-Poetry] Merwin at 80

[R Dillon]

I spoke with Merwin last winter after a reading.  He was
willing to discuss the infamous encounter with Trungpa
in 1975 at the Buddhist retreat in the Rocky Mountains.
I went away from the discussion cognizant of the fact that
this man has gone on to write brilliantly.  At the time,
the event was huge in the imagination
of the literary world.  Now, it is nearly nothing.
 
Also, it is useful to note that Merwin was born
and grew up in a small Pennsylvania town, southeast of
Lake Erie, north of Pittsburgh.  He now lives in Hawaii.
I believe he stilll maintains, or up until recently maintained,
a small hazlenut farm in France.
 
Nothing succeeds like success.  Here is a man who lives
almost entirely in and by means of his imagination.
He is a member of no academic faculty.  His has had
not only a second act, but a third , and fourth act in 
American life.  But he dosen't seem at all American.
His livelihood is secured by the sale of his books in the free market.
 
He wore that cold night what I would call a French cowboy hat.
 
I am nearly certain that I have read certan poems of his
that lifted the essential aesthetic conceptions
of poems I published.  For instance, I have spoken with him
about flying saucers.  The next thing I know,
I pick up a copy of the New Yorker and sure enough
there is a poem written in one long run on sentence
evoking the mystery of a floating disc lambent
in Thanksgiving afternoon mist encountered
over a file of pine trees
while your family is back there in the house
laughing in uproar about something someone did long ago.
 
 
Richard Dillon
_________________________________________________________________
Put your friends on the big screen with Windows Vista® + Windows Live™.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/shop/specialoffers.mspx?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_CPC_MediaCtr_bigscreen_102007
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20071122/1d003392/attachment.html