The Nails Ws Merwin Analysis

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W.S. Merwin: “The Nails” “The Nails” is rated one of the best breakup poems in history. The poem featured in W.S. Merwin’s fifth book of poetry, The Moving Target, in 1963. He, like a number of U.S. poets, began to explore freer straits of poetic expression. What makes this poem special is the intensity of feeling coupled with the startling imagery. This poem tells the story of a breakup without traditional narrative, presenting an emotional arc through flashes of imagery. The poem begins, “I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall / Like a calendar in one color.” The first three words get people leaning toward the ordinary, and then they are yanked into the figurative as sorrow (an abstraction) is made physical and compared to a calendar. A calendar,