“THE DEAD WILL THINK THE LIVING ARE WORTH IT”

The things that made me feel pessimistic then are certainly still with us and more so: the destruction of the natural world, the really insane exploitation of the whole environment, the pollution of the elements, and an economy that’s really based on war and greed—we just seem to be heading straight for complete physical destruction.
—W.S. Merwin, interview with Michael Clifton, The American Poetry Review (1980)

1.

In 2017 Copper Canyon Press reissued W.S. Merwin’s book of poems The Lice to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its original publication. The news caught my attention because I have a personal attachment to this collection. I bought it at a garage sale in New Haven in the summer of 1991, probably for a dollar or two—not a high price to pay for a volume of poems, especially one of such importance (as I later discovered) to the history of American poetry. I had just emigrated from Poland to the United States, bringing with me few possessions and few books, all of them in Polish. What I was holding in my hands on that summer day was a well-worn copy of a later printing, its stark cover featuring only the title and the words “POEMS BY W.S. MERWIN” placed against a brown-and-sepia background. I had never read any of Merwin’s poetry before. Most likely, I had never even heard of him. But I was excited to have found this book—the first book of poems I acquired in America.

Of course I’m not the only person with a special connection to . Matthew Zapruder, who first encountered Merwin’s poetry at a bookshop in Amherst in 1995, states in his introduction to the new edition: “no book I read during my beginning years of poetry had more of a direct influence on me stylistically. also showed me, as has no other book, that true poetry could be reconciled with political engagement without descending into propaganda or rant.” I suspect that hundreds of other poets (of several generations by now) would acknowledge their debt to Merwin in similarly enthusiastic terms. And the description seems fitting for the poet who, even by the time I or Zapruder discovered