Desire and Infinity in W. S. Merwin’s Poetry

Name: Desire and Infinity in W. S. Merwin's Poetry
SKU: 9780807176863
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SKU: 9780807176856

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Categories: Literary Criticism, Poetry

Book Information
Description

Book Information

Additional information

Full Title	Desire and Infinity in W. S. Merwin\'s Poetry
Author(s)	Feng Dong
Edition
ISBN	9780807176856, 9780807176115
Publisher	LSU Press
Format	PDF and EPUB

Description

In the first monograph on W. S. Merwin to appear since his death in 2019, Feng Dong focuses on the dialectical movement of desire and infinity that ensouls the poet’s entire oeuvre. His analysis foregrounds what Merwin calls “the other side of despair,” the opposite of humans’ articulated personal and social agonies. Feng finds these presences in Merwin’s evocations of what lingers on the edge of constantly updated socio-symbolic frameworks: surreal encounters, spiritual ecstasies, and abyssal freedoms. By examining Merwin’s lifelong engagement with psychic fantasies, anonymous holiness, entities both natural and supernatural, and ghostly ancestors, Feng uncovers a precarious relation with the unarticulated, unrealized side of existence.

Drawing on theories from Lacan, Žižek, Levinas, and Heidegger, Desire and Infinity in W. S. Merwin’s Poetry reads a metaphysical possibility into the poet’s work at the intersection between contemporary poetics, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.