Do you see a connection between poetry and prayer?
MERWIN
I guess the simple answer is yes, if only because I think of
poetry as an attempt to use language as completely as possible. And if you
want to do that, obviously you’re not concerned with language as decoration,
or language as amusement, although you certainly want language to be
pleasurable. Pleasure is part of the completeness. I think of poetry as having
to do with the completeness of life, and the completeness of relation with
one’s experience, completing one’s experience, articulating it, making sense
of it.