Lyric “Unpunctuation”: W. S. Merwin’s Early New Yorker Correspondence

Abstract

The New Yorker Records in the New York Public Library preserve W. S. Merwin’s exchanges with editors as they assessed his recent work. After receiving a “first-reading agreement” in the late 1950s, inviting him to submit all of his poems for consideration, his appearance in the magazine increased in frequency. Possessing a first-reading agreement gave poets like Merwin the ability to shape the contours of the lyric that the magazine published at midcentury. Merwin’s first-reading agreement meant an opportunity to become an arbiter of poetic taste. In receiving this agreement, Merwin followed Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, and Adrienne Rich. Later, at Merwin’s recommendation, editor Howard Moss invited Sylvia Plath to join their ranks. Knowing that these writers had such an arrangement alters our sense of their poetic production. While at first Merwin’s poetry fit the existing formula precisely, as time went on his removal of punctuation resisted the kind of control over the genre on which the magazine depended. Following the acceptance of his poem “As by Water,” Merwin informed editor Rachel MacKenzie in 1960 that “a lot of these recent poems have less punctuation … But this un-punctuation seems to me important to the poems.” While Merwin had not yet completely forsaken punctuation, in his early correspondence with The New Yorker he redefined the magazine’s expectations for the lyric and its presence at midcentury. This chapter focuses on three hitherto unpublished letters—an exchange with Moss—discussing the edits Merwin is making in poems for The New Yorker.