This video segment from Poetry Everywhere features the poet W. S. Merwin reading his poem “Yesterday” at the Dodge Poetry Festival. Merwin has said this about the role of the poet in society: “We keep expressing our anger and our love, and we hope, hopelessly perhaps, that it will have some effect.” In “Yesterday”, anger and love are present—what is their effect, on the narrator, and on the reader?

For a biography of the poet W. S. Merwin please visit the Poetry Foundation Web site.