W.S. Merwin: A Passion for Poetry and the Natural World

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• RAY SUAREZ:

  Finally tonight, memory, language, and the poetry of W.S. Merwin. Jeffrey Brown has that story.

• W.S. MERWIN, poet:

  I think we make poems out of what we remember.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  At 81, W.S. Merwin is counted as one of the nation's greatest living poets.

• W.S. MERWIN:

  And our memories as we get older get longer than when we're younger.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  More to remember?

• W.S. MERWIN:

  More to remember.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Author of more than 50 books of his own poetry, translations of others, memoirs and more, Merwin's major prizes include the Pulitzer in 1970 for "The Carrier of Ladders" and the National Book Award for "Migration" in 2005.

  His new volume is called "The Shadow of Sirius." And as he told us in a recent talk at the 92nd Street Y, one of New York's leading cultural centers, it picks up themes that have been there from the start: the boy who was raised in New Jersey and Scranton, Pennsylvania, and wrote his first verses inspired by the hymns sung at the Episcopal Church where his father was a minister.

• W.S. MERWIN:

  As soon as I could move a stub of pencil and put words on paper, I wanted to be a poet. I mean, I was fascinated by the poems that my mother had read to me and by the hymns that we sang in church, which had a different — I mean, the "Spacious Firmament on High," I thought, "That's pretty interesting." But I was kid who couldn't read yet, you know?

  But I was always interested in the sounds of language and how they were related to — what were they related to? Were they really related to people talking and to — why were they standing singing? Then I wanted to write words that they would stand and sing, you know?

  "From the Start."

  "Who did I think was listening

  when I wrote down the words

  in pencil at the beginning

  words for singing

  to music I did not know

  and people I did not know

  would read them and stand to sing them

  already knowing them

  while they sing they have no names"

  I think that's what we're made of, is memory. We're talking to each other in a language we remember, that we didn't invent, that came to us. I'll be washing dishes or doing something like that and think, "Why is that moment in my life in London and that moment of my childhood when I was 9 in Scranton, why are they calked on top of each other and what do they have to do with each other?"