Merwin says poetry is all about listening

"Poetry always begins and ends with listening," according to celebrated poet W.S. Merwin, who will speak and read from his work at the Salt Lake Main Library on Tuesday.

"You listen for something only you can hear," Merwin said by phone from California. "It is not something you immediately understand. To me there is a big difference between prose and poetry. You read prose but you respond to poetry by listening to it. It gets you in a way you cannot describe."

Because Merwin believes so strongly in the sound of poetry, he considers it important for poets to make their public readings expressive of their work. "Some poets read very well and others read terribly. Robert Graves, a poet I worked for in my 20s, was a terrible reader. He mumbled and dropped his lines. Robert Lowell was a very bad reader. Jane Herschfield is a good reader.

"I don't like performance poets. They read as if they were rock stars with microphones. But that's not what I'm talking about. The reader might think the poet reads dramatically but he doesn't need to fling himself around. Some are quite plain and simple in their reading -- but they're also very clear."

The prolific Merwin, now 78, was born in New York City but currently lives in Hawaii. He has spent many years in Europe both as a poet and a translator of Latin, Spanish and French poetry. The author of 15 books of poetry, 20 books of translation, numerous plays, four books of prose and a memoir, Merwin won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for "The Carrier of Ladders" in 1970.

His newly published book "Migration" is a collection of poems that spans his 50-year career and includes both his early and his most recent work.

Merwin is especially well-known for his rejection of poetry's traditional rules of meter and punctuation. Since he became a serious poet in his 30s, he has generally written poems with very long lines and no punctuation. Some critics have teased him about that. One writer, James DeFord, mocked him in 1994 by writing a very long paragraph describing the nature of Merwin's work. It had no punctuation.

"It seemed to me the rules of poetry were not very important," said Merwin. "Prose has a protocol of its own, but that's not true of poetry. When you and I talk to each other over the telephone, we don't have periods and semi-colons in the air all the time. We understand each other without them."

It is Merwin's conviction that all poetry needs to express the feelings of the poet. "Henry David Thoreau said he wanted a plain- spoken account from his own experience from every writer. That's what I want from every poet. The first thing is to hear it. Then it enters you at a place that is deeper than interpretation. Interpretation is of small importance if you hear it."

Although Merwin has produced numerous poems, he never takes the process for granted. "You can plan the next translation, but I've never been able to plan a poem. When something begins to move, I'm always happily surprised, and I don't want to think about it too much and make it go away. One of Balzac's characters said you should not even think of painting unless you have a brush in your hand."

Translation is an entirely different experience, Merwin said. "When you're translating, you're doing something that's impossible. The translation is never going to be the original. This makes you realize your language will never be final. When you write a poem and it comes out right, the only possible word for the only possible thing has arrived. This is the contradiction of impossibility. It happens in translation, too. You may miraculously translate just the right word or phrase from one language to another. It's exhilarating when it happens."

Like most writers, Merwin believes his most recent work is his best, although he is always happy if someone reads and likes one of his early poems. "If everyone liked the same things, life would be very boring."

If you go

What: W.S. Merwin, University of Utah Lyceum II Lecture in Environmental Humanities

Where: Salt Lake City Main Library, 210 E. 400 South

When: Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.

How much: Free

Phone: 581-6214 or 524-8200

Also: Panel discussion, Wednesday, 10-11:30 a.m., Utah Museum of Fine Arts Auditorium

E-mail: dennis@desnews.com

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