“High Company”: W.S. Merwin, John Berryman and the Art of Poetry

Abstract

W.S. Merwin’s accounts of his encounters with John Berryman in his poems and prose writings speak to an important exchange in the younger poet’s artistic development. However, they also suggest interesting ways for thinking about poetic influence, inheritance and affiliation in twentieth-century poetry in the United States. The purpose of this essay is to tease out what Berryman meant to Merwin, based on the evidence to be found in the poems “Berryman” and “Lament for the Makers” in particular. It will also explore the more general questions and concerns that arise out of Berryman and Merwin’s (real and imagined) engagements about the art of poetry, a concern they shared with their mutual mentor and friend R.P. Blackmur.