“For the Anniversary of My Death” W.S. Merwin

1. “For the Anniversary of My Death”W.S. Merwin Student

2. Presentation • Background of W.S. Merwin • Explication • Literary Terms • Personal Analysis • Critical Analysis

3. Background of W.S. Merwin • Born 1927, poem written in 1967 • Son of a Presbyterian minister • First interested in prose, later turned to poetry • Known for both original and translated poetry • According to poetryfoundation.org: “[Merwin] eventually became known for an impersonal, open style that eschewed punctuation.”

4. Explication Merwin’s Text Rephrasing Every year I live, there’s a day that will become my death eventually Death -> Last fires (Funeral pyres) Death -> Silence (Sleep) Death -> Traveler (“Undiscovered Country”) Death -> Lightless star Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveler Like the beam of a lightless star

5. Explication Merwin’s Text Rephrasing Life is awkward and unnatural Death is where we return Just as rain is natural, so is death I bow down to death, although I don’t know him yet Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange garment Surprised at the earth And the love of one women And the shamelessness of men As today writing after three days of rain Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease And bowing not knowing to what

6. Literary Terms Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveler Like the beam of a lightlessstar Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange garment Surprised at the earth And the love of one women And the shamelessness of men As today writing after three days of rain Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease And bowing not knowing to what • Free Verse • Enjambment • Absolutely no punctuation • Alliteration • T’s • S’s • Imagery • Fire | Traveller | Star | Garment • Three days of rain | Wren sing • Anaphora • Ties beginning to the end • Metaphor • Simile

7. Personal Analysis • Merwin’s Eternal Rainfall: Death in “For the Anniversary of My Death” • How he establishes death as a theme • Why we must accept it • Death is constantly around us • “Every year I pass…” • Life is more unnatural than death • “Find myself in life…” • Death is the natural order • We must bow to it, although we don’t recognize it

8. Critical Analysis • “It begins, mordantly enough, even morbidly, with life conceived of as having attained purpose and a measure of identity only when it reaches the end.” (Ramsey 589). • Supports the idea that life is only truly ‘natural’ in death • “[The Lice’s] first premise is the intuition of apocalypse.” (571). • “The poet’s long standing concern with inklings of his own mortality now flows inexorably into the apprehension, little short of the certainty, that we are all living out the end of something.” (571).

9. Works Cited • Google Images • http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/w-s-merwin • Merwin, W.S. “For the Anniversary of My Death.” The Lice. New York: Atheneum, 1967. Print. • Ramsey, Jarold. “The Continuities of W.S. Merwin: ‘What Has Escaped Us We Bring with Us’.” The Massachusetts Review 14.3 (1973): 569-590. Web. • Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917. Print.