For the next several installments of The Poetry Lab, we asked a few writers who have appeared in The Green Room to share their favorite W.S. Merwin poems and reflect on their meanings. Enjoy.
My Favorite W.S. Merwin Poem – Naomi Shihab Nye
Without a doubt, my favorite among hundreds of favorites is To the Mistakes. I open every workshop or class with this poem—it just seems so brilliantly and thoroughly consoling and positive in nature. People who attend workshops are often fraught with a sense of past failure or trepidation about things they have tried to write never quite working out – and this poem sweeps the slate clean – opens the door to every new thing – gives courage – is very funny somehow – it just does it all right. I think it’s an indelible, necessary poem. Breathtaking!
To the Mistakes
You are the ones who
were not recognized
in time although you
may have been waiting
in full sight in broad
day from the first step
that set out toward you
and although you may
have been prophesied
hung round with warnings
had your big pictures
in all the papers
yet in the flesh you
did not look like that
each of you in turn
seemed like no one else
you are the ones
who are really my own
never will leave me
forever after
or ever belong
to anyone else
you are the ones I
must have needed
the ones who led me
in spite of all
that was said about you
you placed my footsteps
on the only way
—W.S. Merwin
Naomi Shihab Nye’s most recent book is The Turtle of Oman (Greenwillow), a chapter book for children. She was the 2013 recipient of theNeustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. She has written or edited around 35 books of poetry, essays, etc. and was visiting writer one semester at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, which changed her family’s lives forever.