SOURCE: Sherry, Vincent B., Jr. “W. S. Merwin.” Contemporary Literature 21, no. 1 (winter 1980): 159-68.

In the following essay, Sherry provides analysis of Merwin's merging of traditional forms in his early works with his later use of free association and surrealism, discussing poems from The Compass Flower as examples.

The poetry of W. S. Merwin comprises things both old and new. Since his first volume A Mask for Janus won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1952, he has in his own way looked forward and backward, developing a distinctive voice as he has mastered a diversity of influence. There have been the years of apprenticeship to Robert Graves on one hand, and on the other the residual but potent influence of the medieval literature in which he has translated extensively. With the recent publication The First Four Books of Poetry (1975) he has collected and, it seems, set off and signatured...