SOURCE: "A Mythic Image of Humankind," in W. S. Merwin: The Mythmaker, University of Missouri Press, 1986, pp. 61-75.

Christhilf is an educator, poet, and critic. In the following excerpt, he examines various themes in Merwin's poetry, particularly his focus on such mythic elements and concerns as mortality, immortality, and the poet's calling.

Merwin's poetry from The Moving Target through Opening the Hand presents a mythic image of humankind. As mythmaker he answers the root questions of existence by imagining the origin, end, and destiny of the human being. Combining images from Christian, Classical, and pantheistic mythologies, Merwin's account of the human condition is traditional: it portrays the life of the individual as part of an encompassing Creation with a transcendent pattern of meaning. Yet mankind in Merwin's myth is also a unique being set apart from the natural world: he is a restless seeker possessing freedom of choice...