“When the war is over […] we will all enlist again” (The Lice): W.S. Merwin P(r)o(ph)etic

This essay takes Kenneth White’s description of “a quiet apocalypse” as a starting point to read the complexities of W.S. Merwin’s poems in The Lice (1967). The poems are to be related to the context of the Vietnam war: the horrors perpetrated by the U.S. in Vietnam are legible in the tense and dark...

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Main Author: Hélène Aji
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Association Française d'Etudes Américaines 2024-12-01
Series:Transatlantica
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/23827
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author Hélène Aji
author_facet Hélène Aji
author_sort Hélène Aji
collection DOAJ
description This essay takes Kenneth White’s description of “a quiet apocalypse” as a starting point to read the complexities of W.S. Merwin’s poems in The Lice (1967). The poems are to be related to the context of the Vietnam war: the horrors perpetrated by the U.S. in Vietnam are legible in the tense and dark poems that protest against them, but they are never explicitly mentioned. Rather, what unfolds is a generic discourse on humankind’s irrepressible propensities to predation, violence and self-destruction. The poems delineate empty indeterminate agents that are intent on performing the dreadful acts that will lead them to a deadly future of extinction. In the wake of T.S. Eliot’s and William Carlos Williams’ opposed yet paradoxically converging visions of spring, W.S. Merwin revises the figure of the poet into the ominous prophet of a programmed apocalypse, delivering in his poems the cryptic messages of a suicidal community of the human.
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series Transatlantica
spelling doaj-art-b44064c3b3454e5baee4f7765f6f64ea2025-01-30T10:48:24ZengAssociation Française d'Etudes AméricainesTransatlantica1765-27662024-12-01210.4000/134gn“When the war is over […] we will all enlist again” (The Lice): W.S. Merwin P(r)o(ph)eticHélène AjiThis essay takes Kenneth White’s description of “a quiet apocalypse” as a starting point to read the complexities of W.S. Merwin’s poems in The Lice (1967). The poems are to be related to the context of the Vietnam war: the horrors perpetrated by the U.S. in Vietnam are legible in the tense and dark poems that protest against them, but they are never explicitly mentioned. Rather, what unfolds is a generic discourse on humankind’s irrepressible propensities to predation, violence and self-destruction. The poems delineate empty indeterminate agents that are intent on performing the dreadful acts that will lead them to a deadly future of extinction. In the wake of T.S. Eliot’s and William Carlos Williams’ opposed yet paradoxically converging visions of spring, W.S. Merwin revises the figure of the poet into the ominous prophet of a programmed apocalypse, delivering in his poems the cryptic messages of a suicidal community of the human.https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/23827Vietnam WarAmerican poetryW.S. Merwin20th century poetry
spellingShingle Hélène Aji
“When the war is over […] we will all enlist again” (The Lice): W.S. Merwin P(r)o(ph)etic
Transatlantica
Vietnam War
American poetry
W.S. Merwin
20th century poetry
title “When the war is over […] we will all enlist again” (The Lice): W.S. Merwin P(r)o(ph)etic
title_full “When the war is over […] we will all enlist again” (The Lice): W.S. Merwin P(r)o(ph)etic
title_fullStr “When the war is over […] we will all enlist again” (The Lice): W.S. Merwin P(r)o(ph)etic
title_full_unstemmed “When the war is over […] we will all enlist again” (The Lice): W.S. Merwin P(r)o(ph)etic
title_short “When the war is over […] we will all enlist again” (The Lice): W.S. Merwin P(r)o(ph)etic
title_sort when the war is over we will all enlist again the lice w s merwin p r o ph etic
topic Vietnam War
American poetry
W.S. Merwin
20th century poetry
url https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/23827
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