Tuesday, August 18, 2009

What Do Writers Want?


FROM "COVER NOTE"
by W.S. Merwin


. . . reader I do
not know that anyone
else is waiting for these
words that I hoped might seem
as though they had occurred
to you and you would take
them with you as your own




FROM "FINDING A NEW POET"
by Linda Pastan


Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods . . .

And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only

in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.


3 comments:

  1. Photos:
    May 16, 2012
    August 22, 2011
    May 26, 2013

    see also: October 7, 2011

    ReplyDelete
  2. A NEW POET
    by Linda Pastan

    Finding a new poet
    is like finding a new wildflower
    out in the woods. You don't see

    its name in the flower books, and
    nobody you tell believes
    in its odd color or the way

    its leaves grow in splayed rows
    down the whole length of the page. In fact
    the very page smells of spilled

    red wine and the mustiness of the sea
    on a foggy day—the odor of truth
    and of lying.

    And the words are so familiar,
    so strangely new, words
    you almost wrote yourself, if only

    in your dreams there had been a pencil
    or a pen or even a paintbrush,
    if only there had been a flower.


    ReplyDelete
  3. COVER NOTE
    by W.S. Merwin

    Hypocrite reader my
    variant my almost
    family we are so
    few now it seems as though
    we knew each other as
    the words between us keep
    assuming that we do
    I hope I make sense to
    you in the shimmer of
    our days while the world we
    cling to in common is

    burning for I have not
    the ancients’ confidence
    in the survival of
    one track of syllables
    nor in some ultimate
    moment of insight that
    supposedly will dawn
    once and for all upon
    a bright posterity
    making clear only to
    them what passes between

    us now in a silence
    on this side of the flames
    so that from a distance
    beyond appeal only
    they of the future will
    behold our true meaning
    which eludes us as we
    breathe reader beside your
    timepiece do you believe
    any such thing do the
    children read what you do

    when they read or can you
    think the words will rise from
    the page saying the same
    things when they speak for us
    no longer and then who
    in the total city
    will go on listening
    to these syllables that
    are ours and be able
    still to hear moving through
    them the last rustling of

    paws in high grass the one
    owl hunting along this
    spared valley the tongues of
    the free trees our uncaught
    voices reader I do
    not know that anyone
    else is waiting for these
    words that I hoped might seem
    as though they had occurred
    to you and you would take
    them with you as your own

    from the book "Travels" (1994)
    by W. S. Merwin

    ReplyDelete