揉和了感官、自然與精神的元素，美國詩人默溫的愛情詩成功示現了拉岡所謂「父名」之外的另類蕩力，以超越「父名」對於「施愛的主體」的限制。本文從精神分析與當代哲學對「他性」（alterity）的構建出發，討論默溫上世紀六十年代之後詩歌中的愛慾模式，該模式於默溫早期詩集《跳舞的熊》（1954）已有所預示，後來在詩集《羅盤花》（1977）與《尋找島嶼》（1982）中全面而豐富地展開。默溫的愛情詩遵循中世紀游吟詩的傳統，將女性呈現為神秘的不可把握的對象。在愛的幻想之中，詩裡男性的敘事者似乎很能享受和所愛女性的歡愉，雖然大部份的時候她的形象實際疏離又多變，已昇華為拉岡意義上的愛的對象或列維納斯意義上的陌異者。默溫後期詩作越來越聚焦於自然與愛慾的頗為問題化的結合，例如，詩集《林中雨》（1988）和《旅行》（1993）裡大量出現對植物群的愛慾化想像：詩人同時幻想女性與自然，有意融合兩者，將愛欲普遍泛化至無垠的宇宙。本文最後試圖表明，默溫的愛情／自然詩，在無意識的層面上，並非如生態批評所揭示的那樣尋求人與自然的和諧，它更接近對人與自然之結構性差異或內在「非一致性」的某種見證。

Blending the sensual, the natural, and the spiritual, W. S. Merwin’s love poetry successfully conjures up what Jacques Lacan terms the “Other jouissance” in order to circumscribe the paternal function and its limitation of the loving subject. This essay traces Merwin’s erotic mode back to The Dancing Bears (1954) and then reads its full outburst in The Compass Flower (1977) and Finding the Islands (1982) in light of psychoanalytical and philosophical formulations of alterity. Merwin’s love poetry follows the tradition of the troubadours in the Middle Ages in its conventional portrait of the female Other as elusive and enigmatic. In the fantasy of love, the male speaker seems able to enjoy union with the beloved woman, although in most cases she appears distant and heterogeneous, sublimated as the Lacanian object or the Levinasian Stranger. Merwin’s later works are increasingly characterized by the problematic combination of nature and Eros and the subsequent eroticization of flora in The Rain in the Trees (1988) and Travels (1993): the poet fantasizes about nature and women, confusing them so as to diffuse Eros into infinite cosmos. In a counter-ecological reading, Merwin’s love/nature poetry is revealed as a testimony of the structural difference or non-adequation between man and nature rather than their harmonious co-existence.