“For the Anniversary of My Death” W.S. Merwin

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Presentation

« Background of W.S. Merwin

« Explication

« Literary Terms

« Personal Analysis

« Critical Analysis

Background of W.S. Merwin

• Born 1927, poem written in 1967• Son of a Presbyterian minister• First interested in prose, later turned to poetry• Known for both original and translated poetry• According to poetryfoundation.org:

“[Merwin] eventually became known for an impersonal, open style that eschewed punctuation.”

Explication

Merwin’s Text

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day

When the last fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

Tireless traveler

Like the beam of a lightless star

Rephrasing

Every year I live, there’s a day that

will become my death eventually

• Death -> Last fires (Funeral pyres)

• Death -> Silence (Sleep)

• Death -> Traveler (“Undiscovered

Country”)

• Death -> Lightless star

Explication

Merwin’s Text

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one women

And the shamelessness of men

As today writing after three days of rain

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease

And bowing not knowing to what

Rephrasing• Life is awkward and

unnatural• Death is where we return• Just as rain is natural, so is

death• I bow down to death,

although I don’t know him yet

Literary Terms

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day

When the last fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

Tireless traveler

Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one women

And the shamelessness of men

As today writing after three days of rain

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease

And bowing not knowing to what

• Free Verse

• Enjambment – Absolutely no punctuation

• Alliteration– T’s

– S’s

• Imagery– Fire | Traveller | Star | Garment

– Three days of rain | Wren sing

• Anaphora– Ties beginning to the end

• Metaphor

• Simile

Personal Analysis

• Merwin’s Eternal Rainfall: Death in “For the Anniversary of My Death”

– How he establishes death as a theme

– Why we must accept it

• Death is constantly around us

– “Every year I pass…”

• Life is more unnatural than death

– “Find myself in life…”

• Death is the natural order

– We must bow to it, although we don’t recognize it

Critical Analysis

• “It begins, mordantly enough, even morbidly, with life conceived of as

having attained purpose and a measure of identity only when it reaches

the end.” (Ramsey 589).

– Supports the idea that life is only truly ‘natural’ in death

• “[The Lice’s] first premise is the intuition of apocalypse.” (571).

• “The poet’s long standing concern with inklings of his own mortality now

flows inexorably into the apprehension, little short of the certainty, that

we are all living out the end of something.” (571).

Works Cited

• Google Images• http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/w-s-merwi

n• Merwin, W.S. “For the Anniversary of My Death.”

The Lice. New York: Atheneum, 1967. Print.• Ramsey, Jarold. “The Continuities of W.S. Merwin:

‘What Has Escaped Us We Bring with Us’.” The Massachusetts Review 14.3 (1973): 569-590. Web.

• Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917. Print.