"If something can't be said, what do you do? You scream." W.S. Merwin on Influence

In this interview with the Los Angeles Times, W.S. Merwin looks back on his relationships with such mentors as Csezlaw Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, and Ezra Pound.

A little bump, then you can take a full hit after the jump:

Why were Milosz and Herbert in New York City? What was the occasion?

The anthology "Postwar Polish Poetry" [edited by Milosz] had just been published [in 1965] and was a very important book. I had introduced a number of remarkable poets that season, and I felt deeply indebted to Czeslaw for "Postwar Polish Poetry," which was a revelation to me.

How did your friendship start?

Czeslaw was older, and I didn't pursue a friendship with him, but he did. He was the one who initiated it, and I was honored and happy because I loved his company. He came to see me a few years later in France, and we spent time together in the area that my book "The Mays of Ventadorn" describes. Over the years, we kept meeting up in different places. He came to see my wife and I on Maui, and we met from time to time in Berkeley when he lived there.

You mention "The Mays of Ventadorn," which describes your immersion in French troubadour poetry. That never would have happened if Pound hadn't told you to go to the South of France — did he function as a mentor to you?

Well, on that occasion he did. He used to send me postcards, little postcards written in pencil, most of which seem to have been lost. You know, when you move, you lose things. One I remember completely said: "Read seeds, not twigs. E.P." But the thing about Pound was … his politics were terrible. I didn't know what they were at the time, which was fortunate, or I don't think I would have gone to see him.

Though Milosz is gone, can he still function as a mentor to other poets?

Oh, I think so, and I think every poet can do that. I still find myself reciting for pleasure, as I have ever since I was 18, [Yeats'] "Sailing to Byzantium" and hearing something in one of the lines that I didn't hear before. You go on learning. What a great poem teaches you, and it's not intellectual at all, is the resonance in the language that's heard there. This goes back to the very origins of poetry and to the very origins of language. I think poetry is as old as language, and both come out of the same thing — an effort to try to express something that is inexpressible. If something can't be said, what do you do? You scream. You make some terrible noise of pain or anguish or anger or something like that. You make a sound, an animal-like sound which, with time and society trying to calm you down, begins to take shape into something.