Reading W.S.

Merwin in a New Century:

American and European Perspectives
Cheri Colby Langdell
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/reading-w-s-merwin-in-a-new-century-american-and-
european-perspectives-cheri-colby-langdell/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-

Century American High School Kyle P. Steele

https://ebookmass.com/product/new-perspectives-on-the-history-of-
the-twentieth-century-american-high-school-kyle-p-steele/

First Words, Last Words: New Theories for Reading Old

Texts in Sixteenth-Century India Yigal Bronner

https://ebookmass.com/product/first-words-last-words-new-
theories-for-reading-old-texts-in-sixteenth-century-india-yigal-
bronner/

Shadows of Empire in West Africa: New Perspectives on

European Fortifications 1st Edition John Kwadwo Osei-
Tutu

https://ebookmass.com/product/shadows-of-empire-in-west-africa-
new-perspectives-on-european-fortifications-1st-edition-john-
kwadwo-osei-tutu/

Scandal And American Politics In The 21st Century Busby

https://ebookmass.com/product/scandal-and-american-politics-in-
the-21st-century-busby/
Scandal and American Politics in the 21st Century
Robert Busby

https://ebookmass.com/product/scandal-and-american-politics-in-
the-21st-century-robert-busby/

Jihadism in Europe: European Youth and the New

Caliphate Farhad Khosrokhavar

https://ebookmass.com/product/jihadism-in-europe-european-youth-
and-the-new-caliphate-farhad-khosrokhavar/

Germany’s Role in European Russia Policy : A New German

Power? 1st Edition Liana Fix

https://ebookmass.com/product/germanys-role-in-european-russia-
policy-a-new-german-power-1st-edition-liana-fix/

Read These Banned Books: A Journal and 52-Week Reading

Challenge from the American Library Association
American Library Association (Ala)

https://ebookmass.com/product/read-these-banned-books-a-journal-
and-52-week-reading-challenge-from-the-american-library-
association-american-library-association-ala/

Ambient Literature: Towards a New Poetics of Situated

Writing and Reading Practices Tom Abba

https://ebookmass.com/product/ambient-literature-towards-a-new-
poetics-of-situated-writing-and-reading-practices-tom-abba/
AMERICAN LITERATURE READINGS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Reading W.S. Merwin

in a New Century
American and European
Perspectives

Edited by Cheri Colby Langdell

American Literature Readings in the 21st Century

Series Editor
Linda Wagner-Martin
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC, USA
American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century publishes
works by contemporary authors that help shape critical opinion regarding
American literature of the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-­
first centuries. The books treat fiction, poetry, memoir, drama and criti-
cism itself—ranging from William Dow’s Narrating Class in American
Fiction and Amy Strong’s Race and Identity in Hemingway’s Fiction, to
Maisha L. Wester’s African American Gothic and Guy Davidson’s Queer
Commodities: Contemporary U. S. Fiction, Consumer Culture, and Lesbian
Subcultures.
Beginning in 2004, the series is now well established and continues to
welcome new book proposals. Manuscripts run between 80,000 and
90,000 words, while the Pivot format accommodates shorter books of
25,000 to 50,000 words. This series also accepts essay collections; among
our bestsellers have been collections on David Foster Wallace, Norman
Mailer, Contemporary U.S. Latina/o Literary Criticism, Kurt Vonnegut,
Kate Chopin, Carson McCullers, George Saunders, and Arthur Miller
(written by members of the Miller Society).
All texts are designed to create valuable interactions globally as well as
within English-speaking countries.

Editorial Board:
Professor Derek Maus, SUNY Potsdam, USA
Professor Thomas Fahy, Long Island University, USA
Professor Deborah E. McDowell, University of Virginia and Director of
the Carter G. Woodson Institute, USA
Professor Laura Rattray, University of Glasgow, UK
 Cheri Colby Langdell
Editor

Reading W.S. Merwin

in a New Century
American and European Perspectives
Editor
Cheri Colby Langdell
Pasadena, CA, USA

ISSN 2634-579X     ISSN 2634-5803 (electronic)

American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
ISBN 978-3-031-13156-1    ISBN 978-3-031-13157-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13157-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
­institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Don Tormey / Contributor / Getty Images

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Be of this brightness dyed
Whose unrecking fever
Flings gold before it goes …
Islands are not forever,
Nor this light again,
Tide-set, brief summer,
Be of their secret
That fears no other.
—W.S. Merwin, “Summer” (CP I 170)
Rain through the morning
And in the long pool an old toad singing
Happiness old as water
—“By the Front Door” (2010, CP II 617)
 For
Athena, Monica, and Oliver
In Memory of W.S. Merwin
 Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge Professor Steve Axelrod, who said, “Merwin needs

a champion. You be his champion!” I also wish to thank Molly Beck, com-
missioning editor at Palgrave Macmillan, for her sustaining help and dedi-
cation to this book. She embodies graciousness and professionalism. I
thank Esther Rani for her professionalism and promptness in replying to
all of my inquiries and her helpfulness. And thanks to Springer Nature for
their interest in saving the earth and combating global warming. Merwin’s
life was dedicated to these efforts, too. I also gratefully acknowledge Sara
Tekula of the Merwin Conservancy for all her gracious help with the
chronology.
I also wish to thank poet and writer Susan Suntree for her editorial help
and inspiration. My thanks, too, to all the patient librarians at the Charles
Young Research Library at the University of California, Los Angeles, who
helped me acquire many materials and helped with research. I would also
like to acknowledge Jeff Gray of Seton Hall University, for his bright.
innovative ideas and unflagging interest in our project.
Thanks, too, to the Pacific Association of Ancient and Modern
Languages (PAMLA) without which this book would probably not exist.
At the 2019 San Diego meeting of PAMLA, I chaired a panel titled “A
Celebration of the Work of W.S. Merwin.” At that event, Thomas Festa,
Tim Langdell, Jeffrey Gray, and Daniel Lambert presented their papers on
the poetry of W.S. Merwin, and out of this session this book was born.
Nancy Goldfarb contacted me about this time; and although her paper
was too late to be included in 2019, in 2021 Nancy Goldfarb and I hosted
two panels on Ecopoetics at PAMLA, where Tom Festa read his “Epic of

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dispossession” and Nancy Goldfarb read an early version of her chapter

for this book. Nancy Goldfarb’s dedication and interest in ecopoetics have
bring this book to completion. Thanks, too, to Craig Svonkin and Jeremiah
Axelrod for their sterling leadership and support of PAMLA, which helped
so much in our launching of this book.
Last, I gratefully acknowledge our daughter the Very Rev. Melissa
Campbell Langdell, who kindly read and commented on chapters, and the
unflagging help of my husband Tim Langdell, who helped in every con-
ceivable way. Without them, this book wouldn’t have been possible.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Cheri Colby Langdell

Part I Merwin and Other Poets  25

2 “High
 Company”: W.S. Merwin, John Berryman and the
Art of Poetry 27
Philip Coleman

3 The
 Value and Forms of Contact in the Work of William
Carlos Williams and W.S. Merwin 43
Ian D. Copestake

4 The
 Lost Steps: W. S. Merwin and the Journey Backward 61
Jeffrey Gray

Part II Nature, Zen and Ecopoetics  77

5 Bound
 to Reverence: Not Knowing, Emptiness, Time,
and Nature in W.S. Merwin’s Poetry 79
Cheri Colby Langdell

xi
xii Contents

6 Merwin’s Ecopoetic Conservancy111

Thomas Festa

7 Reverence
 for Nature: Trees in the Poetry of W.S. Merwin
and Others133
Nancy D. Goldfarb

8 The
 Fox Sleeps in Plain Sight: Zen in the Poetry of
W. S. Merwin159
Tim Langdell

Part III The Poet’s Craft 179

9 “A
 Sense of Being Linked with People”: Poetry,
Listening, Intonation181
Natalie Gerber

10 Lyric
 “Unpunctuation”: W. S. Merwin’s Early New Yorker
Correspondence201
Amanda Golden

11 W.S.
 Merwin’s Homecoming in the Heart of Europe211
Diederik Oostdijk

12 Resilience
 of the Oracular in W.S. Merwin’s “Forgotten
Language”229
Alan Soldofsky

Part IV The Sense of an Ending 259

13 W.S.
 Merwin’s “Retirement”: Late Style and Themes in
the 1990s and After261
Michael Thurston
 Contents  xiii

14 Merwin’s
 Epic of Dispossession279
Thomas Festa

15 Memory,
 Belatedness, and Paradise in W.S. Merwin’s
Later Poetry303
James McCorkle

16 “The
 Last Days of the World”: Apocalyptic Visions in
the Poetry of W.S. Merwin and William Butler Yeats331
Daniel Lambert

Chronology349

Index359
 Notes on Contributors

Philip Coleman is a professor in the School of English, Trinity College

Dublin, where he is also a fellow. He specializes in U.S. American litera-
ture, especially poetry, short fiction, and the essay. His most recent publica-
tions include The Selected Letters of John Berryman (coedited with Calista
McRae, Harvard UP, 2020), Robert Lowell in a New Century: European
and American Perspectives (Camden House 2019), and Robert Lowell and
Irish Poetry (coedited with Eve Cobain, Peter Lang, 2019). pmcolema@tcd.ie
Ian D. Copestake is an editor of the William Carlos Williams Review
and the academic journal Bishop-Lowell Studies both published by Penn
State UP. He has served three times as president of `the William Carlos
Williams Society and is the author of the book William Carlos Williams
and the Ethics of Poetry (NY: Camden House, 2010). Based in Frankfurt
am Main, he is an independent scholar and proofreader, editor, and trans-
lator from German to English. copers@gmail.com
Thomas Festa is Professor of English at the State University of New York
at New Paltz. He is the author of The End of Learning: Milton and
Education (2006; paperback: 2014) and coeditor of three anthologies
focused on early modern English literature. A lifelong poet and student of
lyric, his current scholarly project centers on W.S. Merwin and the history
of radical poetics. festat@newpaltz.edu
Natalie Gerber is Professor of English at State University of New York,
Fredonia, where she teaches courses in professional writing, editing,
­grammar, style, and twentieth-century American poetry and literature.

xv
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

She also directs the Honors Program. She is passionate about helping stu-
dents write their professional futures and achieve more than they thought
possible. She has served on the executive boards of the Robert Frost
Society, the Wallace Stevens Society, and Poetry by the Sea: A Global
Conference. gerber@fredonia.edu
Amanda Golden is Associate Professor of English in the College of Arts
and Sciences at the New York Institute of Technology. She is the author of
Annotating Modernism: Marginalia and Pedagogy from Virginia Woolf to
the Confessional Poets (Routledge, 2020; 2021, paperback), editor of This
Business of Words: Reassessing Anne Sexton (UPF 2016; 2018, paperback),
coeditor of The Poems of Sylvia Plath (Faber & Faber, 2024), and coeditor,
The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath (2022). She is Vice President of
the International Virginia Woolf Society and the Book Review Editor of
the Woolf Studies Annual. agolde01@nyit.edu
Nancy Goldfarb is a teaching professor in the Department of English at
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), where she
teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. Her arti-
cles on Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of
Wrath were published in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Nonprofit
and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. She has also published articles and pre-
sented papers on the poetry of Adrienne Rich, Lewis Carroll, Mary Oliver,
T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, and W.S. Merwin. ngoldfar@
iupui.edu
Jeffrey Gray is the author of Mastery’s End: Travel and Postwar American
Poetry (U. Georgia) and of many articles on American and Latin American
literature. His poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The
Atlantic, Yale Review, Lana Turner Review, and other journals. He is the
English translator of Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s The African Shore (Yale UP) and
Chaos, a Fable (Amazon Crossing), and editor or coeditor of several
anthologies, including The News from Poems: Essays on the New American
Poetry of Engagement (U. Michigan) and the Companion to American
Poetry (Wiley-Blackwell). He is professor emeritus at Seton Hall University
and lives in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, and Alghero, Sardinia. jeffrey.
gray@shu.edu
Daniel E. Lambert is an assistant professor of English at Colorado
Technical University; a Lecturer Faculty in English at California State
University, Los Angeles; and an adjunct associate professor of English at
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii

East Los Angeles College. Daniel writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
Daniel’s book publications include a poetry collection, Love Adventure
(with his wife, Anhthao Bui) and a short fiction collection, Mere Anarchy.
Daniel holds a master’s degree in English and a bachelor’s degree in
History from Loyola Marymount University. He lives in Los Angeles. You
can visit Daniel’s Website at http://dan_lambert.homestead.com/. lam-
berde@elac.edu
Cheri Colby Langdell has published in Nineteenth-Century Literature
and the Emily Dickinson Journal, along with other academic literary publi-
cations like Over Here. She has taught at the University of California,
Riverside, where she helped develop and taught the prelaw undergraduate
major, Law and Society. She has also taught comparative literature at the
University of Southern California, and in the UK, at University of
Nottingham, University of Leicester, and Birkbeck and St. Mary’s Colleges,
the University of London. Her previous books include W. S. Merwin
(Twayne 1981), Adrienne Rich: The Moment of Change (Praeger 2004),
Coping with Vision Loss (Praeger 2011), and “Aphra Behn and Sexual
Politics: A Dramatist’s Discourse with her Audience,” in Drama, Sex and
Politics, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge University Press 1985).​A newly
updated edition of her book W.S. Merwin will be published in 2023
(Oxbridge Publishing). She currently teaches at East Los Angeles College
and Los Angeles Valley College in California. langdecc@elac.edu
Tim Langdell is a professor of Psychology, Buddhist Studies and
Chaplaincy at Buddha Dharma University. He is the author of Beginner’s
Mind: An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Oxbridge Publishing, 2020),
Christ Way, Buddha Way: Jesus as Wisdom Teacher and a Zen Perspective on
His Teachings (Oxbridge Publishing, 2020), Face Perception: An Approach
to the Study of Autism (Oxbridge Publishing, 2020), coauthor of Coping
with Vision Loss: Understanding the Psychological, Social, and Spiritual
Effects (Praeger, 2010), and a chapter author of “Being With Alzheimer’s”
in Dementia-Friendly Worship: A Multifaith Handbook for Chaplains,
Clergy, and Faith Communities (Jessica Kingsley, 2019). He holds a PhD
in psychology from University College, London. He is ordained as both a
Christian priest and a Zen priest; he is a Zen master teacher and abbot of
the Still Center Zen Order in Pasadena, California. tim.langdell@bdu.ac
James McCorkle is the author of three collections of poetry: Evidences
(APR/Copper Canyon, 2003), The Subtle Bodies (Etruscan Press, 2014),
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

and In Time (Etruscan Press, 2020). He is also the author of The Still
Performance (a study of postmodern American poetry, from the University
Press of Virginia). He is the editor of Conversant Essays: Contemporary
Poets on Poetry (from Wayne State University Press), and coeditor with Jeff
Gray and Mary McAleer Balkun, Greenwood Encyclopedia of American
Poets and Poetry (2006) and American Poets and Poetry: From the Colonial
Era to the Present (2015). He also has collaborated with visual artists, most
recently with Gabriella D’Angelo, on a project on detention, migration,
and ecology. He received his MFA (poetry) and P.D (English) from the
University of Iowa and teaches in the Africana Studies program at Hobart
and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. For the past nine years,
he has served as the director of the African Literature Headquarters.
mccorkle@hws.edu
Diederik Oostdijk is Professor of English and American Literature at
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He has published widely on American
poetry and culture, and is the author of Among the Nightmare Fighters:
American Poets of World War II (2011). More recently, he published the
monograph Bells for America: The Cold War, Modernism, and the
Netherlands Carillon in Arlington (2019). d.m.oostdijk@vu.nl
Alan Soldofsky is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and
the director of Creative Writing at San Jose State University. His most
recent collection of poems is In the Buddha Factory (Truman State
University Press). With David Koehn, he is coeditor of Compendium: A
Collection of Thoughts About Prosody, by Donald Justice. His poems and
essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including
recently in Catamaran, Fence, The Gettysburg Review, Gigantic Sequins,
The L.A. Review of Books, Poem-a-Day, Puerto del Sol, Vox Populi, California
Fire and Water: Climate Change Anthology, and The William Carlos
Williams Review. He directs the MFA Creative Writing program at San
Jose State University. alan.soldofsky@sjsu.edu
Michael Thurston is the Helen Means Professor of English Language
and Literature. Since his arrival at Smith in 2000, he has taught courses on
twentieth-century poetry in English, modernism, American literature, and
American studies. His primary research interest is modern and contempo-
rary poetry, on which he has published three books and ­numerous articles.
He publishes on the work of Henry David Thoreau and Ernest Hemingway,
and, with the support of a fellowship from the National Endowment for
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xix

the Humanities, he is writing a biography of the literary critic and Harvard

professor, F.O. Matthiessen. In 2010, he was awarded Smith’s Sherrerd
Prize for Distinguished Teaching. He currently services as Provost and
Dean of Faculty at Smith College. mthursto@smith.edu
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Cheri Colby Langdell

William Merwin was an American original. He is like a great pine

tree that has fallen. His work is going to live on, but I can’t get over
his loss.
Edward Hirsh
Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.
W.S. Merwin, Pe’ahi

W.S. Merwin has been a defining poet in American literature since he

burst onto the national scene with the publication of A Mask for Janus,
which won the Yale Younger Poets’ Award, and he has been a towering
figure ever since. He has been called, by Fred Stern, “perhaps America’s
most widely celebrated American poet.” “During his six decade-long
career, W.S. Merwin has established himself as one of the poetic greats,
earning him the crowning achievement of 17th Poet Laureate of the
United States,” says Fred Stern, adding, “No one in our time has been

C. C. Langdell (*)
English Department, East Los Angeles College, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Los Angeles Valley College, Los Angeles, CA, USA
e-mail: langdecc@elac.edu

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
C. C. Langdell (ed.), Reading W.S. Merwin in a New Century,
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13157-8_1
2 C. C. LANGDELL

more instrumental in structuring and affirming his own identity.”

W.B. Yeats … had once firmly defined the function of the poet, saying, “It
is myself that I make” (Gale). Over the years, his readers have watched as
his complex, yet intimate poetry evolved from an early mastery of com-
plex, almost baroque poetic forms to free verse and open forms. As he
matured poetically, he also shifted toward more global concerns—ecologi-
cal, even political. In this his career parallels writers slightly older than him
like Lowell, and Adrienne Rich, who was younger.
He has produced an enormous, ambitious body of work, publishing
over 40 books in 70 years. At the pinnacle of American poetry, he was
Poet Laureate of the United Sates twice, awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice,
and won the National Book Award along with nearly every other conceiv-
able poetry prize including at last two lifetime achievement awards. Yet
surprisingly very little has been written on his poetry recently, so here
we’ve assembled a collection of essays affording new insights into his
poetry and other work—his translations, his forewords to books and his
epic—offering new ways to read his poetry and exploring his ecopoetry, as
Nancy Goldfarb and Thomas Festa do, as well as comparing his poems
with those of other poets. Amanda Golden examines Merwin’s early inter-
changes with The New Yorker, presenting three unpublished letters he
wrote to Howard Moss, its poetry editor and showing what they reveal
about his decision to abandon punctuation. James McCorkle and Jeff
Gray explore his fulfillment of his poetic purpose, Michael Thurston dis-
cusses Merwin’s so-called retirement, Daniel Lambert compares his visions
of apocalypse with those of W.B. Yeats, while Philip Coleman and Tim
Langdell show parallels between his writing and other poets (Coleman)
and borrowings from Buddhism in his work (Tim Langdell). Cheri Colby
Langdell writes about the Buddhist concepts of “nothingness” and “emp-
tiness” in his poetry.
Although one of Merwin’s most famous poems is “For the Anniversary
of My Death,” the American poetry community was shocked by his death
in early 2019. He was fixed star of American poetry, a poet who had writ-
ten prolifically for over 75 years. Although he was already 91, it seemed to
us that he would never die. Even so, the poetry world was dismayed when
he passed away on the Ides of March. He would have appreciated the
irony of his departure on that day. He would have appreciated the humor
of passing away like Caesar on the Ides of March.1 Merwin resembled
Sirius, the star he celebrates in his Pulitzer Prize winning The Shadow of
Sirius, which Elizabeth Lund asserts, “explores loss, memory, and the
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

continuum of time, lingers with readers the way light from Sirius reaches
the earth—long after leaving its source” (CSM 4 June 2009). Like that
star, he was an abiding presence in American poetry, quietly shining in the
background, yet participating more actively as a judge of poetry competi-
tions, giving grants and awards into his eighties. He always wanted to give
new poets the recognition and acclaim they deserved, so instead of retir-
ing, he encouraged newcomers to the field and discovered excellent new
poets and writers among those aspiring to be read by the poetry commu-
nity. The Merwin Conservancy is now becoming a writers’ retreat where
poets at the start of their careers can go to write in the peaceful palm forest
he planted.
Despite having had many offers of professorships and residencies,
Merwin forfeited the relative comfort and security of an academic position
long ago since he’d realized that years of workshops and sitting discussing
poetry was not for him. Perhaps like the raven in his poem “Noah’s Raven”
(CP I 207) he simply wanted his freedom and may have thought it would
limit his creativity. The call of the wild and the unknown and unknowable
were too strong: indeed, he’d been restless for many years, living in
Chiapas, Mexico, Spain, France, London, and New York. Throughout his
career he remained peripatetic until in the mid-1970s, when he and his
wife Paula established their home in Pe’ahi, Haiku, Maui, championed
conservation and environmental activism, and began restoring an old
plantation where the prior owners had failed in their attempt to grow
pineapples and reviving its grounds by planting every possible variety of
palm tree. From the time he settled in Maui, his poetry became more
Buddhist and more focused on nature and creation. While he remains the
consummate international poet, “his whole approach is religious in the
root sense of being bound or bonded to reverence. Two major coherences
in the work, then, are its vocal fluidity and its concern for Nature” (Mason
584) and Creation, as David Mason asserts. His “concern for what is
beyond mere human making. Merwin’s obsessions with stories—biblical,
mythological, tribal—is of the same substance and has never abated. His
book-length narrative, The Folding Cliffs (1998), is a Hawaiian Genesis
and Exodus rolled into one” (Mason 585).
In this collection many authors—Nancy Goldfarb, Thomas Festa,
Jeffrey Gray, James McCorkle and others explore this dimension of
Merwin’s poetry, probing the ways Merwin’s poetry expresses these
coherences and complications. In later years he shifts his focus to human-
ity’s interconnectedness with nature and kinship with all life. He engages
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“Where does the river come from?” he asked, and a deputy chief
answered:
“From the innermost parts of the earth.”
“Good! And hath man ever been to the place where the gods make
the springs of water to flow?”
“No; man could not live.”
“Why?”
“The water comes from the fire god, who burns all who approach.”
“Then what shall be done with those who have come from the fire?”
“They shall be exalted.”
“Mkrasi! mkrasi!” shouted all the members of the tribe.
The conversation, or rather public discussion, which we have
recorded occupied considerable time, for the language of this tribe of
Gondos was very diffuse, abounding in metaphor, and making the
repeating of whole sentences necessary where emphasis was
required.
The chief stepped down from the platform in front of his house, and
calling on ten of his deputies headed the procession across the great
square, round which the houses were placed.
While the chief was away, the utmost decorum was observed.
Not one spoke a word.
Even the women were silent.
Soon a great noise was heard.
Drums were beating and rude cymbals were being played. The
drums were original in their make.
A piece of wood had been hollowed out, and over the top a
sheepskin had been tightly stretched.
Into the square the procession moved.
First came ten young girls, playing very rudely constructed cymbals.
Following them were five older girls, keeping time by striking shells
together. Then came the drummers, boys whose strength seemed
almost too frail for the big, heavy drums they carried.
After them was a drummer who made a most ear-splitting noise by
beating an old tin pan—which had been found in a deserted camp,
and which the Gondos verily believed must have been the white
man’s musical instrument.
What meant all this pageantry and display?
The chief emerged from his yard, and, with head bowed down, led
the way to where the people were standing. Immediately behind him
were the ten deputies, carrying a strange-looking log of wood
shoulder high.
With measured tread these natives walked under their heavy burden.
When the center of the tribe’s gathering had been reached, the chief
ordered the men to set down their load.
Instantly there was a cry of rapture from every man there assembled.
The women pressed forward, and really screamed with delight.
“From the gods!” exclaimed the chief, and these poor, benighted
savages really believed it.
The log was in reality a dugout, and in the dugout two young men
were sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.
They were our friends, Ibrahim and Max, rescued by the Gondos,
and now the objects of their adoration.
The shouting of the men, the screeching of the women, caused Max
to awake.
He sprang to his feet and looked round.
“Well, jewilikins! this caps the climax!” he exclaimed, while the
people fell on their faces and wriggled about on the ground.
 CHAPTER XVII.
THE RAINMAKER.

It was some time before Madcap Max could realize just where he
was, and the significance of the demonstration of which he was the
recipient.
But when once his mind got a clew, he quickly followed it up, and
with the natural smartness of his Yankee ancestry, saw the
advantages of his position.
He very carefully abstained from uttering a word.
The silence impressed the Gondos with awe.
They were more than ever convinced that he was a messenger from
the mysterious powers which they, in their ignorance, worshiped.
The Gondos had a religious belief almost akin to that of the ancient
Scandinavians.
They believed that the thunder was the angry voice of the storm god,
that a deity presided over everything in nature, and that the entrance
to the home of the most powerful of these deities was through the
mysterious volcanoes which at times emitted vast columns of molten
lava and made the waters of the rivers so hot that no one could
bathe in them and live.
Having this belief, it was no wonder that they thought Max and
Ibrahim were sent by the presiding deity.
Ibrahim continued to sleep.
That was a good sign, and if only the delirium left him when he
awoke, Max made sure all would be well.
He managed to convey to the chief a desire to be alone, and the
boat was again raised on the shoulders of the deputy chiefs and
carried to a large house which the chief had set apart for his honored
guests.
Max was hungry, and when food was brought he ate heartily.
He had no idea of what the dish was composed, neither did he, at
that time, care.
He was too hungry to be fastidious.
He reserved some of the savory food for Ibrahim, and motioned the
natives to leave the place.
All that day Max stayed by Ibrahim’s side, and awaited his
awakening.
His devoted patience was rewarded, and toward night Ibrahim
awoke and raised his head.
“Are we alive?” he asked.
“I am,” was the madcap’s answer.
“Then I think I must be; but, by the beard of the prophet, I have been
beyond the grave.”
“Good! Stick to that, Ib, and your fortune is made.”
Ibrahim was indignant at the light way in which his companion spoke,
but Max persisted.
“I tell you, Ib, if only you will stick to that, and do as I tell you, we will
coin the dollars.”
“That is like you Americans—always thinking of dollars.”
“And why not? Can you get along without dollars?”
“Perhaps not; but why be always thinking about them? I hate the
very name of money,” exclaimed Ibrahim, fretfully.
“Do you? Well, I don’t,” answered Max, and continued talking, for he
realized that there was no better way to rouse Ibrahim’s dormant
faculties than by a good discussion.
“I don’t,” he said—“neither do you. You will go on making shawls in
Persia, no matter how many dollars you get. You want to travel—you
must have the money or you cannot do it. Say, old chap! did you
never imagine that every dollar is coined through some fellow’s think
tank being agitated?”
“Think tank! What do you mean?”
“Brain, if you like. Think tank, I call it—thought factory, if you like it
better. But, say! you were dead, and you have come to life again. I
have brought you from the grave.”
“You are mad.”
“Madcap, please; don’t abbreviate my sobriquet.”
“You are insane.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. But tell me, Max, where are we?”
“You are in a boat, I am on the floor; we are in a house belonging to
the Gondos——”
“Who?”
“The Gondos.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, why?”
“Have you spoken to them?”
“Not much.”
“Can you understand what they say?”
“Only a little.”
“If they are Gondos, I am safe.”
“Are you? And why so, Mister Ibrahim Pasha?” asked Max, with a
broad brogue.
“The Gondos were originally Persians——”
“Your relatives?”
“And were fire worshipers.”
“Is that so?”
“And I have learned their language.”
“Have you, really?”
“I thought they were extinct.”
“Not by any means; they are as thick as blackberries on a bramble
bush, and as lively as June bugs.”
By talking in this fashion, Max succeeded in making Ibrahim vexed,
and that was the very best thing for his mind.
When his temper had cooled a little, Ibrahim became calm, and then
Max told him how they had been rescued.
“They think we are from the storm gods, and so we must be, or they
must think so, and we shall be safe. Once let them get any other
idea into their ugly heads, and we shall be made into soup.”
“The Gondos never eat meat,” said Ibrahim, taking Max to mean
what he said in a literal sense.
“Anyway, we must keep up the delusion.”
“Can we?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“You must do just what I tell you. I have it all arranged.”
“If we fail?”
“We shall die; but if we succeed, we shall soon see Sherif el Habib
——”
“And Girzilla,” added Ibrahim.
“We shall. Now to begin. I am going to make it rain. You know the
language, you said?”
“I believe so.”
“Then you must tell them what I am going to do.”
“What can you do?”
“Never mind. I know they want rain, and would do anything to get it. I
want you to hurry, or my power will be lost.”
Ibrahim was of too serious a nature to care for practical joking, and
that was just what he imagined the madcap was after.
But Max was in earnest, and he led Ibrahim from the strange-looking
house to the one occupied by the chief.
The tattooed chieftain bowed himself to the ground when he saw
Ibrahim.
But when the Persian spoke a few words in the Gondo language, the
old fellow was so delighted that he danced about and shouted like a
good fellow.
“The Gondos want rain. Their fields are dry, the crops are spoiling.
Tell them I will cause the rain to come.”
Max spoke in English and Ibrahim translated into the Gondo
language.
The chief ordered the girls to play the cymbals and the drums to be
beaten.
All the people gathered together, and Max raised his hands above
his head as if in the act of supplicating.
Almost immediately a few drops of rain fell, and the people were
delighted.
The drops became larger and more numerous, until a good, healthy
shower descended, and the Gondos were frantic with joy.
Even Ibrahim was excited.
“How did you do it?” he asked, earnestly, when Max had pleaded for
permission to return to their house.
“You silly fellow, I did nothing. It was all hocus-pocus on my part.”
“But the rain——”
“Came; of course it did. I saw that we were in for a shower, and I
meant to get the credit of it; that is all there is to it.”
Max was a weather prophet.
He had a better knowledge of meteorology than many a so-called
expert, and he saw clear indications that a rain-cloud was gathering.
The one happy chance of his life had come.
It was a miracle, at least so thought the Gondos, and nothing was
too good for Ibrahim and Max.
But even among those primitive people there were skeptics, and a
long discussion took place as to the powers possessed by Max.
Ibrahim heard the discussion, and returned to the madcap, his face
white as death.
“You are to be taken to some high rock and ordered to jump down. If
you fail your character is gone.”
“And life, too. Never mind. Get me some giant palm leaves, and I’ll
not be afraid.”
Ibrahim obeyed without question, and when on the following morning
Max and the Persian were conducted by the tribe to a steep cliff,
Max laughed heartily.
But when he looked over, he saw that he had a thousand chances
against him, and naturally felt nervous.
“Tell them,” he said, in English, to Ibrahim, “that to jump off there
would be no test. Anyone could do it.”
“Of course they could, but they would be killed.”
“Don’t say that, but say that I will go to the top of yonder palm and
leap from it.”
The palm was a tall one, the trunk slender and easily climbed, but
the height was such that to jump from the top meant death.
The offer made by Max was accepted, and the young madcap began
his perilous ascent.
When near the top he stood on the stem of one of the monster
leaves, and rested a moment.
From under his coat he took two palm leaves which he had
succeeded in joining together.
Opening them above his head, he held his breath and jumped.
As he expected, the wind filled out the palm leaves like a parachute
and Max came to the ground so gently that the most pronounced
skeptic was enthused, and ready to do anything for the young hero.
“We have a mission!” Ibrahim said to the chief, “and thy people must
help. In the desert there is an oasis, and on the oasis is a great man,
one Sherif el Habib, who is seeking the Mahdi of his people. We
wish to find him.”
Ibrahim explained the locations of the oasis as well as he could, and
the chief recognized it as being a place some adventurous member
of his tribe had told him about.
After some days absolute rest a caravan was formed, and with girls
playing cymbals and others beating drums, Max and Ibrahim started
on their journey across the desert to find their friends.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
WHY OUR HEROES DESERT.

For some hours the caravan passed through a country which was
parklike, but parched by the dry weather.
The ground was sandy, but firm, and interspersed with villages, all of
which were surrounded with a strong fence of euphorbia.
The girls kept up an incessant discord on the cymbals and drums,
and the men, sent by the chief of the Gondos, were so impressed
with the importance of their mission that every hundred yards or so
they would stop, congratulate each other, and make some wonderful
salaams before they continued the journey.
At the end of the second day’s march, a tribe hostile to the Gondos
was encountered.
Five or six hundred naked savages appeared, well armed with
lances, having flint heads, bows and arrows, and a peculiar weapon
shaped almost like a sledge hammer—one side of the flint head
being sharpened to a fine point, while the other was a hammer.
One of their number stepped forward, and addressing Ibrahim
asked:
“Who are you?”
“A traveler, wishing to cross the desert.”
“Do you want ivory?”
“We would hunt the elephant, and divide the spoil.”
“Where do you come from?”
Ibrahim answered proudly:
“From Persia.”
“It’s a lie!” was the emphatic reply made by the chief.
“Very well,” answered Ibrahim; “what am I?”
“A Turk.”
“Allah forbid!” muttered the Persian.
The chief pointed to Max.
“Who is he?”
“An American.”
The native had never heard of such people, and he began to think
Ibrahim was making a fool of him.
The natives laughed and raised their weapons.
Ibrahim, in a loud voice, told them that they were going to be killed if
they dared to touch Max; that he could cause the storm to come and
the wind to blow, and advised them to ask the Gondos.
Among the few things saved from the boat in which they had made
their perilous journey was a bottle of araki—a native spirit almost
equal in power to proof alcohol.
Max suggested that the hostile chief should be regaled with a little of
the araki, and that his friendship should be purchased that way.
The bottle was produced, but neither Ibrahim nor Max had any
chance of opening it, for the hostile chief took the bottle from them,
broke off the neck, and drank the contents as easily as he could
have swallowed water.
“Good, good! more!” he exclaimed; but at that moment a violent
storm of thunder and rain burst upon them with terrific fury.
The rain fell like a veritable cloudburst, and the natives,
remembering what Ibrahim had said, ascribed the storm to Max, and
fled as though ten thousand soldiers were pursuing them.
The American’s reputation was now well assured, and the musicians
beat the cymbals louder than ever, while the men shouted
themselves hoarse.
Max was getting tired of the assumed position, but he saw no way
out of it.
One thing troubled both explorers—they were either going in the
wrong direction, or the distance was greater than they had imagined.
They, however, had to submit.
They were treated as superior mortals, and oftentimes were in
dilemmas from which it was difficult to extricate themselves.
One morning the deputy chief who was in command of the Gondos
threw himself on his stomach in front of Max and wriggled like a
snake to attract attention.
“What is it, M’Kamba?” asked Ibrahim.
“The great chief hath said it,” answered the native.
“What hath he said?”
“That the wonderful medicine man whose life could not be
destroyed”—meaning Max—“must take all the cymbal girls as his
wives, and his great friend, whose tongue speaketh wonders, shall
take all the drummer girls as his wives.”
“Allah forbid!” ejaculated Ibrahim, under his breath.
Making an excuse that he must consult with Max, he got rid of the
Gondo.
“Here is a fix we’ve got into,” said Ibrahim, when alone with his
friend.
“What is it?”
“Do you know how many cymbal players we have?”
“About thirty.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Well, they are all yours.”
“Mine?”
“You have to marry them.”
“The——”
Max stopped. His thoughts evidently formed the name by which the
prince of the power of the air is familiarly known, but he bit his lips
and did not utter his thoughts.
“Yes; and I am to marry all the drummers.”
“What a lark!”
“Eh?”
“I said it would be fun,” answered Max.
“Do you think so?”
“Fancy, if you offended your wives, or if you wished to give them a
lecture, they would seize their drums and beat such a tattoo that you
would acknowledge yourself vanquished.”
Max laughed so heartily at the idea that Ibrahim almost feared for his
reason.
Taking up the challenge, however, he retaliated.
“And wouldn’t your ears be split with the chorus of tinkling cymbals?”
“It is horrible. Of course you refused the honor.”
“I did not.”
“Wha-at?”
“I did not, because I dare not.”
“Why?”
“Have you never heard of the custom of the Gondos?”
“No.”
“It is this: The chief calls a favorite to him and desires to honor him.
He does so by giving him one or more wives—the more wives the
greater honor.”
“Indeed!”
“If the favored one declines the honor, he insults the chief.”
“Well?”
“And that can never be forgiven.”
“What do I care about that?”
“Perhaps nothing; only——”
“Don’t hesitate. You drive a fellow mad with your long pauses,”
exclaimed Max, almost angrily.
“Don’t get mad, there’s a good chap. They only roast the one who
insults the chief.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. It is true; ask any of them. Now I don’t want to be either
roasted, baked, or boiled, so I will have to accept the drummers, only
——”
Again Ibrahim paused, and Max stood staring at him, but remained
silent.
“Only I shall delay as long as I can.”
“We will get out of it.”
“How?”
“Leave that to me. I will find a way.”
Before Ibrahim could ask again what plan had formulated itself in the
madcap’s brain, M’Kamba, the deputy chief, came forward, and this
time standing erect, said:
“We will all drink araki now.”
Ibrahim knew enough of the marriage customs of the African tribes to
realize that the espousal of the girls was to take place at once, and
that the drinking of the powerful araki was the outward symbol of the
marriage.
“It is all over with us,” sighed Ibrahim.
“I don’t think so. Who has any araki?”
“M’Kamba must have, or he would not have suggested it.”
“Then let him bring the bottles here, and the girls shall drink first.”
“You are a mystery, Max. What do you intend doing?”
“Wait and see. Curb your impatience a little bit, there’s a good chap.
Do just as I tell you, and all will be well.”
Ibrahim approached M’Kamba and told him that Max was ready to
open the araki bottles, and all should drink.
“The great chief did send the araki for the wives,” answered
M’Kamba, proving clearly that all had been arranged beforehand.
The bottles—made of the bladders of cows, dried—were produced,
and Max very quietly, in the presence of all, poured some white liquid
in each of the bottles.
Ibrahim looked on in astonishment.
“Give a good drink to each of your wives, Ibrahim, but don’t touch a
drop yourself.”
“Is it poison, Max?”
“On my honor, no.”
The girls drank heartily. It was the gala day of their lives.
They were about to become brides, and they felt their importance.
While they were single they were slaves; when they were married
they would become free.
It was a proud time for them, and they took deep draughts of the
powerful spirit.
Then the Gondos took the bottles, and each man upheld the credit of
his stomach by drinking pretty heavily.
But the spirit was too strong.
One by one the girls began to feel drowsy, and fell asleep.
Then the men followed.
In less than half an hour only Max and Ibrahim were awake.
“Now is our time; we must run for it. They won’t wake for an hour.”
“What did you give them?”
“Sleeping potion—pretty stiff dose, too.”
“What is that?”
“What your uncle uses when he wishes anyone to sleep long.”
“And you have some?”
“I had. They have it now”—pointing to the sleeping Gondos. “I took it
from the great Sherif el Habib’s medicine case.”
“Oh!”
Ibrahim evidently was alarmed at the consequences of the madcap’s
theft, or as he would put it, enforced borrowing.
Max laughed heartily, and suggested that they should “git up and
get.”
This Yankeeism was too much for the Persian.
He began to believe that Max was really mad.
The suggestion, however, was a good one, and gathering together
food, and some other stores, enough to last several days, the two
young men left their escorts fast asleep and proceeded alone on
their journey.
Instead of following the route M’Kamba had sketched out for them,
they turned to the right, determined to follow as far as possible the
course of the river until the oasis was crossed, and then to trust to
their luck in finding the encampment of Sherif el Habib.
 CHAPTER XIX.
MOHAMMED.

The oasis was nearly crossed when they left the Gondo escorts, and
the young explorers soon found themselves on the terrible African
desert.
They were not pursued—at least, as far as they knew—and they
were delighted at regaining their freedom.
After a day of misery on the sand, when their eyes were blistered,
their nostrils swollen, and their ears deafened with the never-ending
atoms, which drifted everywhere, Ibrahim directed the attention of his
companion to a cloud of sand in the distance.
“What of it?” asked Max.
“Camels.”
“Well?”
“It is a caravan, and if we can reach it we shall be safe.”
“But——”
“Never mind any buts; come along, Max.”
“I shan’t stir one inch,” asserted Max, resolutely.
“Why?”
“Because the caravan is coming this way.”
“Bravo! So it is. Inshallah!”
Resting in the hot burning sand, the young men waited until they
could distinguish the outlines of the approaching caravan.
Then they rose up and went to meet them.
In the front rode a man, with olive skin, not darker than a Spaniard.
He was dressed in Egyptian costume, and sat perfectly contented on
his camel.
A spear rested across the animal’s back, and a modern rifle was
slung over the rider’s shoulders.
But what was most remarkable was a sacred carpet, which acted as
a kind of saddle cloth, and on which had been worked the symbolic
sign of the crescent suspended over the cross.
The combination was so strange that Max was inclined to believe the
rider was some monomaniac, or, in modern parlance, a crank.
Ibrahim, stepping up to the rider, and in good Arabic, asked who he
was, and whither he was going.
The rider looked at the young Persian some minutes before
answering, giving Max an opportunity to look at the people who
composed the caravan.
Some thirty men, dressed like the leader, save that they had not the
sacred carpet with the double symbols, rode as many camels.
With them were at least twenty women, their faces covered so that
the eye of man could not invade the sanctity of the countenance,
which Oriental law and custom declared to be sacred to the husband
alone.
“I am Mohammed!” said the leader, when his examination of
Ibrahim’s features was completed.
“Mohammed!” repeated Ibrahim.
“I am Mohammed, and am of the family of the faithful.”
“And whither wilt thou go?”
“The sun will cast my shadow to the north as I journey to the south.”
It was useless asking to what part of Africa the pilgrims were going,
until the entente cordiale was fully established.
Ibrahim prostrated himself after the manner of the Musselmen and
beat his brow on the sand.
The Mohammedan left the saddle, and spreading the sacred carpet
on the sand, prostrated himself by Ibrahim’s side.
Then it was that the two followers of the prophet realized that they
were friends and brothers in religion.
“Behold, the crescent shall be exalted, and shall rule even all the
countries of the world. I have said it. Just Allah!”
“You ought to know my uncle,” said Ibrahim. “You would be
brothers.”
“Who is it that callest thee nephew?”
“Sherif el Habib——”
“Of Khorassan?”
“The same. Dost thou know him?”
“In youth, when the eyes of houris shone brightly into mine, Sherif el
Habib was as a brother.”
“He is in the desert seeking the Mahdi.”
“Dost thou mean it?”
“Even so. Is it not so, Max?”
Max was unable to answer, for Mohammed clapped his hands, and
all his followers prostrated themselves on the sand, bowing their
heads toward the direction of the sacred shrine at Mecca.
“I, too, dust as I am, yet of the family of the faithful, will seek the
Mahdi, for he it is who will raise the crescent above the cross and
make the kingdom of the prophet co-equal with the kingdoms of the
world.”
The man Mohammed was evidently in a state of great mental
exaltation, and like Sherif el Habib, believed that the promised savior
or leader of the Moslems had come, and was awaiting an opportunity
to crush the Christian nations and proclaim the rule of Mahomet.
Max was enchanted.
He liked enthusiasts.
He worshiped heroes.
But with his hero worship was mingled so much commercialism that
men never gave him credit for any idea beyond the making of
dollars.
“We will find this Mahdi,” he said, “and he shall lecture through the
States. There will be millions in it.”
How disgusted Mohammed would have been had he understood
what Max said!
Ibrahim was annoyed. It sounded so much like an insult to his
religion.
But he deftly turned the conversation by saying:
“Max, my friend, has a mission. He is searching for the last of the
Mamelukes.”
“When Selim, the tyrant, destroyed the Mamelukes,” said
Mohammed, solemnly, “he gave to many provinces a bey of
Mameluke blood. He did it to save his life. I, who speak unto thee,
had for my great ancestor Mohammed, the fearless, who was one of
the beys.”
“Didst thou come from the line of great Emin?”
“Alas, no! My ancestors did eschew the Mamelukes and joined the
Turks.”
“Dost thou think Emin’s descendants live?”
“As sure as that the sun does shine by day and the moon by night.”
“I would that I could find them.”
“There is one who could guide thee.”
“Where may I find that one?” Max asked, excitedly.
“Alas! she is lost.”
“She? Is it a woman?”
Mohammed turned away his head to hide his emotion.
Strong man as he was, his body shook as if with violent ague.