Crashing the party, then speaking to the guest of honor: W.S. Merwin

A poet worth discovering or rediscovering

W.S. Merwin is a poet I met by accident although it seems he was always there, waiting for me to pay attention. A poet whose strength is image, sound, syntax, and well, just about everything else.

1992—A new friend from my poetry group let me know that Merwin was coming to town to give a reading at Harvard for the launch of the next issue of Harvard Review. Did I want to join her? He was the reason she began writing, she said. It was the early 1990’s and in those days one could see a famous poet in Cambridge at least one or two days a week. Lucie Brock-Broido, Mark Doty, Jorie Graham, Marie Howe, Denise Levertov—they all passed through (or lived in) town offering free readings.

So why not? The reading was packed out with students, professors, and interlopers like us. I remember Merwin’s sonorous voice and the humble tone in which he introduced his work. Afterwards, much to my surprise, Andrea insisted that we sneak into the afterparty happening just across the hall from the auditorium. Through a small doorway we watched svelte women in velvet dresses holding champagne flutes and batting their eye lashes at the beautiful Bill Merwin.

“C’mon,” she said, “before I lose my nerve.” Of course we were not dressed in velvet; of course, we in no way looked the part of the Cambridge literati, but all of a sudden we were through the doorway and standing by the small circle surrounding Merwin. Surely we would be escorted out at any moment so Andrea spoke quickly. I had never heard her speak so emotionally or for so long; a gush of breathless sentences. And then she was done. Spent. My inclination was to grab her hand and run.

But before I could get us out of that akward space, Merwin spoke. Thirty years on, I remember exactly what he said.

“Thank you That makes me feel useful”

My quiet friend made the famous poet feel useful! He seemed moved by her words. Not embarrassed. Not upset that we weren’t part of the poetry crowd. Not rude. To us, this seemed a miracle and even more evidence that he was among the true poetry gods and goddesses.

It had never occurred to me before that evening that a famous poet would care whether or not his words mattered to an awkward young woman. And that woman wasn’t me but my friend who summoned everything she had in her to crash the party and speak to the poet who meant so much to her.

My words fail me here. This remembrance isn’t about Merwin’s stellar and important work. It’s not about all the times I saw him read after that night, or how the evening shaped me as a poet. It’s about that one small gesture: to answer my friend with kindness, to see her as a fellow poet, and to honor that connection.

Decades later, a friend gave me a copy of this poem, “To the Book” as my book The Alchemist’s Kitchen came into the word and now, this past February, this poem opens the book Demystifying the Manuscript which I have co-edited with my friend Kelli Russell Agodon. This is how poetry enters our world: threading its way through gate crashing parties and via kind friends.

May your poetry world be filled with accidents of light and love.

TO THE BOOK

Go on then
in your own time
this is as far
as I will take you
I am leaving your words with you
as though they had been yours
all the time

of course you are not finished
how can you be finished
when the morning begins again
or the moon rises
even the words are not finished
though they may claim to be

never mind
I will not be
listening when they say
how you should be
different in some way
you will be able to tell them
that the fault was all mine

whoever I was
when I made you up

 --- W.S. Merwin