I that all through my early days
I remember well was always
                 the youngest of the company
                 save for one sister after me

As an introduction to an anthology, the poem was a relatively sweet, perhaps slightly mawkish affair, a combination of autobiography and commemoration. As a poem in its own right, "Lament for the Makers" fares somewhat worse.

The stanza ends with the word "me", as does every subsequent stanza. This again is a nod to Dunbar's original in which every fourth line is "Timor mortis conturbat me"-- "The fear of death confuses me" [or perhaps "throws me into confusion or disorder."] But in Dunbar's poem the personal note conveyed by this admission is rendered almost non-personal [and certainly non-confessional] by its appearance in Latin rather than English. The Latin draws into the poem an ecclesiastical feel, almost as though both Dunbar and Dunbar's readers are participating in a funeral mass as they read. Thus "me" becomes the universal human, rather than any particular individual.
     In Merwin's poem, on the other hand, "me" is clearly Merwin himself, as even the first stanza makes obvious. As the stanzas roll on, the poem accumulates a sense of authorial self-importance. Are these poets worth commemorating for their work [and lives?], or rather because they have had an impact on Merwin's life? The question sounds silly, but it begs to be asked, especially as the manner in which Merwin leads us to each final "me" is sometimes so frivolous. In the case of Dylan Thomas, for example, the first of the dead makers to be noted, we read--

then first there was Dylan Thomas
from the White Horse taken from us
                to the brick wall I woke to see
                for years across the street from me

Even if Merwin intends the wall across the street metaphorically, as an image of everyman's eventual death, it seems an incredibly inept way to end the stanza, and it reduces Thomas' death-- alcoholic tragedy that is was-- to the mundane. But I contend that Merwin is speaking literally here, of a literal wall he used to see, because-- if it were the wall of death-- then it would still be before him, not a thing of the past [unless Merwin has been granted immortality?] Plath likewise receives a "neighborhood" finale-- "in the house a few blocks from me"-- as though the death is primarily notable because Merwin was nearby.
     But the inane is perhaps to be preferred to the grotesque, as when we read--

then the sudden news that Ted
Roethke had been found floating dead
                in someone's pool at night but he
                still rises from his lines for me

I am frankly surprised at the implied [if unintended] image of a drowned Roethke stepping out of the pool to recite poetry. But at least the third and fourth lines of the stanza scan: the first line of the stanza, though, is missing a syllable, and the second stanza either demands 5 stresses [Roeth- had- found- float- dead] or three unstressed syllables in a row [ke- had- been].
     Another problem is the prevalence of imagery and/or sentence structures which become so convoluted that I, at least, cannot make any real sense of them. The twelfth stanza begins a sentence which continues for fifteen lines [unpunctuated, of course!] during which we go from the initial clause, into an appositive noun phrase which may refer to either the subject of that clause or to the object of a preposition in an adjective phrase and which contains two subordinate adjective clauses, followed by three more subordinate clauses, also acting as adjectives, the second of which contains a prepositional phrase modified by yet another subordinate clause which concludes with two verbal phrases, the latter of which holds two more subordinate clauses. The place at which this fatiguing sentence seems to end, as well as I can tell, comes within a line, thus giving no hint [since Merwin does not punctuate] that the sentence has actually ended until the reader is far enough into the following sentence to realize that the grammar is suddenly not working at all unless there is, somewhere, a stop he has missed. [And you thought my sentences were twisted!] The tangle of grammar in this labyrinth the tangled imagery Merwin gives us-- telling us of a secret which is also a breath [or is it the air in which that secret is "safe" which is actually the breath?] which sang to Merwin when he was a child and "caught [him] helpless to convey it" with nothing but words, though the words rang to him with a tone he has been listening for ever since, hearing it vary "endlessly" as he has tried to find its source and "to what words it may come." Huh? And what is this all-important secret that has apparently motivated all his verse? Is it simply that he is the youngest? That he is always moving into crowds older than he is and to which he has to prove himself? As silly as it sounds, that is all that I can deduce from the context.
     On the other hand, the poem has an inviting and relatively direct tone, unusual for Merwin, which perhaps makes it seem more remarkable than it truly is. Add to that the feeling one has that he is being ungenerous to criticize a memorial, and the poem acquires a sort of "untouchable" aura-- it becomes a poem that we are required to admire, or else to keep silent about.

The sheer anonymity of those memorialized raises a specter-- the near certainty that, before too many centuries [or decades?] have passed, the poets Merwin laments will also be forgotten.

Mail to Cooper Renner

Cooper Renner also reviews books and engages in various critical activities for the online magazine 'elimae', under the name b. renner. He is a published poet and a very eclectic fellow.