SOURCE: Andersen, Kenneth. “The Poetry of W. S. Merwin.” Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and Critical Journal 16 (January-October 1970): 278-86.

In the following essay, Andersen characterizes Merwin's work as a poetry of evolution based on a philosophy that depends on an ever-changing point of view.

W. S. Merwin's poetry (The Dancing Bears, Green with Beasts, The Drunk in the Furnace, The Moving Target, The Lice), is a poetry of a distinct evolution. In these five books of poems, he has created not only diverse works of art but also, within this art, a synthetic philosophy which depends on, for its very foundation, a vital, changing point of view. As a poet Merwin begins in disenchantment and isolation. He has felt the malaise of the “Wasteland,” and it conditions his early, personal poetry, The Dancing Bears. In Green with Beasts the poet travels across the sea in an Odyssean quest...