W. S. Merwin and the Great Outside

Abstract: W. S. Merwin, in his later poetry, has entered a realm of being that is endless and timeless, where time becomes unhinged and place uncertain. This is no longer the wildness or wilderness celebrated by US poets from Walt Whitman to Gary Snyder, but an adventure into the objectless presence, in which Merwin, troubled by blindness in later years, has to grope for a living sense. Visibility diminishes, and things tend to disappear or return to their nascent states, enshrouded in darkness, although an inner light still illumines his memories. Hence the ghostly resonance in Merwin’s later poetry, the elusive aspects of which will again take the critic to the task. In poems from The Pupil (2001), Present Company (2005), The Shadow of Sirius (2008), The Moon Before Morning (2014), and Garden Time (2016), we encounter neither distinct objects nor divisible mental states, but the arising, lingering, and cessation of consciousness. Writing toward “the great outside,” Merwin implicitly dialogues with thinkers like Maurice Blanchot and Quentin Meillassoux, who have theorized on the outside of subjectivity. Merwin’s indebtedness to various brands of Buddhism, such as Zen, Yogacara, and Tibetan Buddhism, also comes to the foreground. Attending to the rustling “outside,” Merwin’s poetry releases us from cultural anxieties and epistemic bounds. Reading late Merwin in our own postpandemic, postinformation age will refocus our energy on the essentials of life in a constantly updated technocratic world.