In certain installments of The Poetry Lab, we ask a writers who have appeared in The Green Room to share their favorite W.S. Merwin poems….
My Favorite W.S. Merwin Poem – Alexander Maksik
“Berryman” was one of the first of William’s poems that I read, and one I’ve had above various desks, in various homes. I liked the way that it begins with a kind of promise, that somewhere within I might find an answer to the only question I was really concerned with: How do I become a writer? Don’t lose your arrogance. Pray to the muse. Literally. Paper your walls with rejection slips. Poetry was passion, passion was genius. I loved all of this. I felt forgiven for failure and believed, as I still do, that passion would be the only thing left. You die without knowing. If you have to be sure don’t write. What writer doesn’t want to know? What writer doesn’t want an absolute answer to that question? But I look at “Berryman” and I am reminded that I write not to be sure, but out of inexplicable desire and that desire must be enough.
Berryman
I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war
don’t lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you’re older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity
just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice
he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally
it was in the day before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop
he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England
as for publishing he advised me
to paper my walls with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry
he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t
you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write
—W.S. Merwin
Alexander Maksik is the author of the novels You Deserve Nothing and A Marker to Measure Drift, which was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2013. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Nonrequired Reading, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Salon, and he is a contributing editor for Condé Nast Traveler. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received a Pushcart Prize and various fellowships. His website is www.alexandermaksik.com