Writings on Writing: December 2022

Looking through some old copies of the Black Warrior Review, I found an interview with W. S. Merwin in the Spring 1982 issue. Asked about "the rhetorical aspects of poetry," Merwin responded, in part:

"I've been thinking a lot about this lately, as I guess everybody has. One of the reasons is because the events of the times don't give me much room for optimism. If you write poems you certainly don't want to exclude that kind of concern. I think there is an urgent and real sense in which any real poem is political in that it deals with experience as deeply as it possibly can, and uses language, which is one of the great bonds with other human beings. It uses it, I  hope, as responsibly as possible. One's involvement in a political moment can obviously touch us and speak to us and involve us at the same level as the rest of our experience. If that's the case we can write political poems possibly, instead of just political statements in poetic form."