“For the Anniversary of My Death” and “The Nail” are considered as the main turning point in W.S Merwin’s use of stylistic approach to poetry. In almost all of his poems, he virtually uses no punctuation of any kind as his choices of words are simpler. Still present in these poems are the poet’s fascination with death, the spiritual, ruination, and the natural. These poems capture the facets of Merwin’s 1960s style and the use of imagery. They are also presented in stanzas, which are irregular, but given the link between the stanzas, the poems suggest that an inverted sonnet was used by the poet. Also, the poems are characterized by persistent capitalization at the beginning of every line. This paper seeks to deeply discuss imagery as used in the "For the Anniversary of My Death" and "The Nails", by W.S. Merwin.
“For the Anniversary of My Death” the poem begins with the speaker informing the reader, “Every year without knowing it I have passed the day” (Merwin 636), which is the longest single line in the poem. It also sets out the situation in the poem. This line ends …show more content…
This momentarily illuminates the speaker’s painful future, where the present wounds would have healed and formed scars. After a few lines, there is another one-line stanza - “It isn’t as simple as that” (McDaniel). This is the only line that has been repeated throughout the poem, yet it is also one of the most colloquial in the whole poem. From this line, the reader realizes the biting, rational voice in the speaker’s mind, undermining the poet who has embalmed these ambiguous feelings of anguish into language (Merwin 79). Moreover, it is as if the speaker has an in-built heckler in his head. This summarizes the speaker’s feelings and it also resonates with how the poet uses imagery in all his other poems to express his opinions and views of life as well as the struggles accompanying
“For the Anniversary of My Death” the poem begins with the speaker informing the reader, “Every year without knowing it I have passed the day” (Merwin 636), which is the longest single line in the poem. It also sets out the situation in the poem. This line ends …show more content…
This momentarily illuminates the speaker’s painful future, where the present wounds would have healed and formed scars. After a few lines, there is another one-line stanza - “It isn’t as simple as that” (McDaniel). This is the only line that has been repeated throughout the poem, yet it is also one of the most colloquial in the whole poem. From this line, the reader realizes the biting, rational voice in the speaker’s mind, undermining the poet who has embalmed these ambiguous feelings of anguish into language (Merwin 79). Moreover, it is as if the speaker has an in-built heckler in his head. This summarizes the speaker’s feelings and it also resonates with how the poet uses imagery in all his other poems to express his opinions and views of life as well as the struggles accompanying