The Louisville Review – Spring 2007

The current issue of The Louisville Review contains a fascinating interview with W.S. Merwin. Merwin was a guest author at Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA program in the Fall of 2006.

The current issue of The Louisville Review contains a fascinating interview with W.S. Merwin. Merwin was a guest author at Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA program in the Fall of 2006. In his interview he describes the importance of form in poetry and how a poem “is its form” regardless of whether it’s “in an abstractable form or whether it only happens once.” He goes on to say that “all forms empower what they’re the form of; they make it possible.” If a poem works, he says, then it is because “the form is an empowerment.” Regardless of whether you write prose or poetry, his words focus our attention on the line and learning to hear it. One of the attributes that sets The Louisville Review apart from other journals is a section called “The Children’s Corner,” poetry by children between 12 and 18 years of age. The first of these poems in this issue, one by a poet named Rene A. Girard, begins, “I was shot by an arrow, and / sorrow fell,” exemplifying the control and originality of these young writers. Another poem by Evan Cassity contains the line “Yesterday, I told the sun / That for all the light, I wanted out.” Collectively, the work of these writers reveals a kind of honesty that is as refreshing as it is beautiful. A gift more literary journals might consider bestowing on their readers.
[http://www.louisvillereview.org/]