SOURCE: Ramsey, Jarold. “The Continuities of W. S. Merwin: ‘What Has Escaped Us We Bring with Us.’” Massachusetts Review 14, no. 3 (summer 1973): 569-90.

In the following essay, Ramsey discusses the evolution of Merwin's style and themes, focusing on The Lice and its place in Merwin's oeuvre.

Too much has been made, probably, of the New Departures in W. S. Merwin's poetry since he began his career in 1952 with A Mask for Janus. Remarkable differences there are, to be sure, between those ripely elegant, sometimes precious early poems of high mythic density, and the downright, Lowellesque family mythologizings in The Drunk in the Furnace; or between these pieces and the austere poems in The Lice and The Carrier of Ladders. Yet—such is Merwin's achievement in all phases of his career—it is finally the continuity more than the variety that is worth pursuing. Men perish, in Alcmaeon's dictum, because...