I can't imagine ever writing anything of any kind on a machine. I never tried to write either poetry or prose on a typewriter. I like to do it on useless paper, scrap paper, because it's of no importance.
W. S. MerwinRead
As a child, I used to have a secret dread - and a recurring nightmare - of the whole world becoming city, being covered with cement and buildings and streets. No more country. No more woods.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a fear of losing natural landscapes to urbanization.
W. S. Merwin expresses a childhood fear of a world entirely consumed by urban development, suggesting a deep appreciation for nature and the countryside. The recurring nightmare signifies an anxiety about environmental loss that resonates with concerns over modern issues of urban sprawl and the diminishing natural world.
Themes
NatureUrbanizationEnvironmentChildhoodFear
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about environmental conservation.
More from W. S. Merwin
All quotes →I think there's a kind of desperate hope built into poetry that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there's still time.
W. S. MerwinRead
The kind of writing that matters most to me is something you don't learn about. It's constantly coming out of what I don't know rather than what I do know.
W. S. MerwinRead
I say to my breath once again, little breath come from in front of me, go away behind me, row me quietly now, as far as you can, for I am an abyss that I am trying to cross.
W. S. MerwinRead
Through all of youth I was looking for you_x000D_ without knowing what I was looking for_x000D_ part memory part distance remaining _x000D_ mine in the ways that I learn to miss you_x000D_ from what we cannot hold the stars are made.
W. S. MerwinRead
What I really believe is the only hopeful relation between our life and the whole of life is one of reverence and respect and of feeling at one with it. The other attitude which is the one our society is based on is devastating and it is killing the earth and it is killing us too.
W. S. MerwinRead
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All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.
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What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.
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