Words of Awe

posted by Pearl Abraham

I attended the W.S. Merwin tribute at the 92nd Street Y on Monday night (courtesy of Beatrice.com) and came away with the feeling that I’d heard our prophets speak. Each of the three poets who read, by way of introducing Merwin, has a particular relationship with him and the poems they selected reflected that. Naomi Shihab Nye, whose work I don’t yet know, read, among other poems, a Lucille Clifton poem dedicated to W.S. Merwin; Edward Hirsch, who has an interest in Sufic writings, read some of Merwin’s more mystical work, including one about his black dog Molly, animals being a frequent subject of Sufic poetry; Gerald Stern spoke of and read poems set in NYC, specifically the Waverly Place walk-ups in which he and Merwin once lived. And then Mr. Merwin himself stepped out and read a selection of poems that ranged from his earliest books to most recent, some not yet published. W.S. Merwin’s words, the meanings they made, his quiet attentiveness to the natural world, and most palpably, his celebration of what’s good in this world imparted a numinous quality not often experienced at public events, sitting, as I was, in a near full house at the Y’s Kaufman Hall.

W.S. Merwin’s, Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press), is a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry.

13 October 2005 | events |

Buy My Friend’s Book!

As part of my ongoing effort to get you to read Phil Campbell’s Zioncheck for President, I hereby direct you to an excerpt published by his former employer, Seattle’s alternative alternative newspaper, The Stranger, about his involvement in Grant Cogswell’s campaign for a spot on the city council:

We tried to create an independent speaking tour for Grant. We didn’t have much success until Grant received permission from the owner of a popular outdoor theater to talk to his patrons for 10 or 15 minutes before The Wizard of Oz began. There would be several hundred people in attendance, more than all of the District Democratic meetings combined.

I didn’t drive Grant that night; I was too busy crunching some voter statistics we had just received. So Grant and Tara borrowed my car. Tara drove while Grant tried to think about what he would say to all of the families that he would be standing in front of.

They got to the theater with plenty of time before sundown, only to discover that the theater had moved the year before, and neither of them had any idea where it was now located.

Our volunteer coordinator called Grant’s cell phone, gave Grant the correct address, and urged him to hurry. The movie was going to start in five minutes, with or without him.

12 October 2005 | read this |