Merwin's own work aims to "make something happen." He says, "I think that the idea of art for art's sake--it's OK, but it ends up with reacrame., You know, if you like reacrame, that's fine, but there's no reason why it should be supering in stamp collecting or anything else, and I don't think that's what poetry is about." He gestures a passing ambulance. "It's about life and death."

Merwin's writing often focuses on ecological issues. "One of the things that's never separate any longer from anything I do is the relation of humans to the rest of life. I don't even like using words--I mean, I use them--but I don't even like using words like nature or the environment, because they assume that there's a separation, that there's us and then there's that...And dangerous, probably fatal, consequences arise from that and we see them all the time."

Merwin speaks as he writes--in long strands of clauses. And he writes in imitation of the spoken word. "The main current in poetry," he says," and the kind of poetry that really matters to me can't ever lose that pole that's in the oral--it's in the spoken word." He doesn't punctuate his poetry for this reason.

When we sit on this park bench talking to each other," he says, "we don't put in little commas and colons and exclamation points. We don't need them, because we hear it." Merwin folds his sunglasses on his lap. "The closer words get to poetry, the more the spoken language is there. And that's not punctuated."

Early in his career, Merwin did use punctuation. He wrote in traditional forms, with traditional use of rhyme and meter. Critics make much of Merwin's formal shift.

Characteristically, though, he understates the change. "I don't think it was as dramatic a break as people have said it was." He averts his eyes; he's probably had to explain this before. "The pattern, the abstract form, has a life cycle...It seemed to me, maybe 20 years ago, that the iambic pentameter had become extremely dull...I think that's changed. I think some people now are writing it in a way that's interesting...And my own new book is quite formal--in a different way."

Merwin emphasizes the value of form. "[It] makes you pay attention to language." He argues that all writing is autobiographical. "Even when you're telling a lie, the lie is your truth at the time." And he emphasizes poetry as a practised craft. "This idea of spontaneity," he says, "there's lot of silly talk about it...We go to the ballet and we want the ballet to be spontaneous, but you know that it comes out of years and years of very hard practice."

While we're on the subject of "silly talk," Merwin debunks another myth--that poets can analyze their inspiration. "People get very smart and canny about it, but finally it escapes you. Isn't that great that you can never sort of get the jump on it...It's always smarter than you are." Another fleet of ambulances crosses Mt. Auburn Street.

Merwin is late for the Nieman fellows by now, but he doesn't look concerned. We get up and start toward the Square. He puts on his sunglasses.

"You know Auden said this wonderful thing. He said, "You always write out of what you know, but you don't know what you know, but you try to write it." It's a very wise thing to have said. Much wiser than the thing about poetry making nothing happen."