W.S. Merwin Interview (page: 7 / 7) Two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry	Print Interview

In one of your poems, you begin, "From the kindness of my parents, I suppose it was, that I held that belief about suffering, good people." It sounds like you had kind parents.

W.S. Merwin: Yes, yes. That wasn't all they were, but they certainly were kind. Yes. My mother more so than my father. My father was frightened, and less kind than my mother. But yes, it's perfectly true and they both had a sense of decency about how you behave towards people. You didn't do nasty and cruel things. You just didn't do that.

Would you read that poem for us?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. "Good People" From the kindness of my parents I suppose it was that I held that belief about suffering imagining that if only it could come to the attention of any person with normal feelings certainly anyone literate who might have gone to college they would comprehend pain when it went on before them and would do something about it whenever they saw it happen in the time of pain the present they would try to stop the bleeding for example with their own hands but it escapes their attention or there may be reasons for it the victims under the blankets the meat counters the maimed children the animals the animals staring from the end of the world

Perhaps you'd be kind enough to read another for us, "Yesterday."

Get the Flash Player to see this video. "Yesterday" My friend says I was not a good son you understand I say yes I understand he says I did not go to see my parents very often you know and I say yes I know even when I was living in the same city he says maybe I would go there once a month or maybe even less I say oh yes he says the last time I went to see my father I say the last time I saw my father he says the last time I saw my father he was asking me about my life how I was making out and he went into the next room to get something to give me oh I say feeling again the cold of my father's hand the last time he says that my father turned in the doorway and saw me look at my wristwatch and he said you know I would like you to stay and talk with me oh yes I say but if you are busy he said I don't want you to feel that you have to just because I'm here I say nothing he says my father said maybe you have important work that you were doing or maybe you should be seeing somebody I don't want to keep you I look out the window my friend is older than I am he says and I told my father it was so and I got up and left him then you know though there was nowhere I had to go and nothing I had to do

Thank you so much. What does writing poetry do for you?

W.S. Merwin: I have to do it. It's central to my life. García Lorca said to a young poet that if you can live without writing poetry, don't do it, nobody needs it. But I can't live without it, I've always wanted to do it. It makes sense of things.

What advice would you give to a young person wanting to write poetry?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. W.S. Merwin: It's all about attention and listening. Pay attention and listen. Listen to everything, listen to absolutely everything. Listen to the sounds you don't want to hear, listen to the ones you do want to hear, listen to the people talking around you. I heard this wonderful thing this morning about taking the bus. Every so often, I was saying to Paula, the last time as we went through New York, I used to love riding on the subway, because I don't have to have something to read, I just am sort of fascinated by everybody around me, what they're saying and what they're doing. It's paying attention, but it's listening, listening. And all of a sudden you hear something, and it may be a phrase that you've heard over and over again, but suddenly it's got electricity in it, you know. And those are the notes you take out. What is that little charge in there and where does it want to go? You may not even know what it's about, but it's all about, if you tried to write something new all of the time -- as I have -- all your life, it seems to change. If you're telling the truth in the essential place where you don't know, it really is all you that is coming out and nobody else could write it, and that's what you want. That's what you want to make students see, listen. Chuang Tzu -- who was a great Taoist, as much as almost 3,000 years ago -- said, "When I say that someone is good at hearing, I do not mean that they are good at hearing anything else. I mean that they are good at hearing themselves." That's what the attention is about. And however smart you are, if you get distracted from that you're going to end up in an unhappy place, I think.

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You've spoken to students about embracing their ignorance.

W.S. Merwin: Ignorance is going to be with them, however smart they get and however much they know.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Our knowledge, the whole of human knowledge -- look at the night sky -- how big is our knowledge? We're tiny, you know. It's dust. It's tiny. The unknown that surrounds it, where it all came from, it's the great mystery, we don't know where it came from. How come we're here? It's every bit as interesting as where we're going. How come we're here at all? Isn't that amazing, really? Out of the whole of the universe, out of the whole of what we think of as time, here we are.

What did it mean to you to win the Pulitzer Prize for The Carrier of Ladders?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. W.S. Merwin: It's very nice to win prizes. I don't think you should spend your life hungering and thirsting for them, but if they come your way, that's fine. I remember John Berryman, somebody said -- there was some question of him winning some big prize -- and there was a journalist interviewing him and he said, "Well, if you win that prize, it will be wonderful, won't it?" And John said, "Yeah, it will be wonderful. It won't be very wonderful, but it will be wonderful." I thought that's pretty good. There's a line of the Psalms that says, "If riches come, set not your heart upon them." You accept them and you say thank you, whatever it is, and it's very nice, but don't pin your life on these expectations. I've always felt that. If it comes by, that's nice.

Thank you so much. It was a great experience talking to you.

W.S. Merwin: Thank you.

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