W. S. Merwin

William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island's rainforests.

Merwin received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 and 2009; the National Book Award for Poetry in 2005, and the Tanning Prize—one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets—as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2010, the Library of Congress named him the 17th United States Poet Laureate.

W. S. Merwin was born in New York City on September 30, 1927. He grew up on the corner of Fourth Street and New York Avenue in Union City, New Jersey, and lived there until 1936, when his family moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania. As a child, Merwin was enamored of the natural world, sometimes finding himself talking to the large tree in his back yard. He was also fascinated with things that he saw as links to the past, such as the building behind his home that had once been a barn which housed a horse and carriage. At the age of five he started writing hymns for his father, a Presbyterian minister.

Early career: 1952–1976

After attending Princeton University in 1952, Merwin married Dorothy Jeanne Ferry, and moved to Spain. During his stay there, while visiting the renowned poet Robert Graves at his homestead on the island of Majorca, he served as tutor to Graves's son. There, he met Dido Milroy, fifteen years his senior, with whom he collaborated on a play and whom he later married and lived with in London. In 1956, Merwin moved to Boston for a fellowship at the Poets' Theater. He returned to London, where he befriended Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. In 1968, Merwin moved to New York City, separating from his wife Dido Milroy, who stayed at their home in France. In the late 1970s, Merwin moved to Hawaii and eventually was divorced from Dido Milroy. He married Paula Dunaway in 1983.

From 1956 to 1957, Merwin was also playwright-in-residence at the Poet's Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts; he became poetry editor at The Nation in 1962. Besides being a prolific poet, he was a respected translator of Spanish, French, Latin and Italian literature and poetry (including Lazarillo de Tormes and Dante's Purgatorio) as well as poetry from Sanskrit, Yiddish, Middle English, Japanese and Quechua. He served as selector of poems of the American poet Craig Arnold (1967–2009).

Merwin is known for his poetry about the Vietnam War, and can be included among the canon of Vietnam War-era poets which includes writers Robert Bly, Robert Duncan, Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg and Yusef Komunyakaa.

Merwin's early subjects were frequently tied to mythological or legendary themes, while many of his poems featured animals. A volume called The Drunk in the Furnace (1960) marked a change for Merwin, in that he began to write in a more autobiographical way.

In the 1960s, Merwin lived in a small apartment in New York City's Greenwich Village.

Later career: 1977–2019

Merwin's volume Migration: New and Selected Poems won the 2005 National Book Award for poetry.

In 1998, Merwin wrote Folding Cliffs:A Narrative, an ambitious novel-in-verse about Hawaiʻi in history and legend.

The Shadow of Sirius, published in 2008 by Copper Canyon Press, was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

In June 2010, the Library of Congress named Merwin the seventeenth United States Poet Laureate to replace the outgoing Kay Ryan. He is the subject of the 2014 documentary film Even Though the Whole World Is Burning. Merwin appeared in the PBS documentary The Buddha, released in 2010. He had moved to Hawaii to study with the Zen Buddhist master Robert Aitken in 1976.

In 2010, with his wife Paula, he co-founded The Merwin Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving his hand-built, off-the-grid poet's home and 18-acre restored property in Haiku, Maui, which has been transformed from an "agricultural wasteland" to a "Noah's Ark" for rare palm trees, one of the largest and most biodiverse collections of palms in the world.

Merwin's last book of poetry, Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), was composed during the difficult process of losing his eyesight. When he could no longer see well enough to write, he dictated poems to his wife, Paula. It is a book about aging and the practice of living one's life in the present. Writing about Garden Time in The New York Times, Jeff Gordinier suggests that "Merwin's work feels like part of some timeless continuum, a river that stretches all the way back to Han Shan and Li Po."

In 2017, Copper Canyon Press published The Essential W. S. Merwin, a book which traces the seven decade legacy of Merwin's poetry, with selections ranging from his 1952 debut, A Mask for Janus, to 2016's Garden Time, as well as a selection of translations and lesser known prose narratives. Merwin's literary papers are held at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The collection consists of some 5,500 archival items, and 450 printed books.

Merwin lived on land that was part of a pineapple plantation, on the northeast coast of Maui, Hawaii.

W.S Merwin died on March 15, 2019, in his sleep at his home, as reported by his publisher Copper Canyon Press.

• 1952: Yale Younger Poets Prize for A Mask for Janus
• 1954: Kenyon Review Fellowship in Poetry
• 1956: Rockefeller Fellowship
• 1957: National Institute of Arts and Letters grant
• 1957: Playwrighting Bursary, Arts Council of Great Britain
• 1961: Rabinowitz Foundation Grant
• 1962: Bess Hokin Prize, Poetry magazine
• 1964/1965: Ford Foundation Grant
• 1966: Chapelbrook Foundation Fellowship
• 1967: Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, Poetry magazine
• 1969: PEN Translation Prize for Selected Translations 1948–1968
• 1969: Rockefeller Foundation Grant
• 1971: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Carrier of Ladders (published in 1971)
• 1973: Academy of American Poets Fellowship
• 1974: Shelley Memorial Award
• 1979: Bollingen Prize for Poetry, Yale University Library
• 1987: Governor's Award for Literature of the state of Hawaii
• 1990: Maurice English Poetry Award
• 1993: The Tanning Prize for mastery in the art of poetry
• 1993: Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Travels
• 1994: Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award
• 1999: Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress,a jointly-held position with Rita Dove and Louise Glück
• 2005: National Book Award for Poetry for Migration: New and Selected Poems
• 2004: Golden Wreath Award of the Struga Poetry Evenings Festival in Macedonia
• 2004: Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2008: Golden Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement
• 2009: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Shadow of Sirius (published in 2008)
• 2010: Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
• 2010: United States Poet Laureate
• 2013: Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award

Other accolades

Merwin's home town honored him in 2006 by renaming a local street near his childhood home W. S. Merwin Way.

Poetry

Collections

• 1952: A Mask for Janus, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press; awarded the Yale Younger Poets Prize, 1952 (reprinted as part of The First Four Books of Poems, 1975)
• 1954: The Dancing Bears, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press (reprinted as part of The First Four Books of Poems, 1975)
• 1956: Green with Beasts, New York: Knopf (reprinted as part of The First Four Books of Poems, 1975)
• 1960: The Drunk in the Furnace, New York: Macmillan (reprinted as part of The First Four Books of Poems, 1975)
• 1963: The Moving Target, New York: Atheneum
• 1966: Collected Poems, New York: Atheneum
• 1967: The Lice, New York: Atheneum; (reprinted in 2017, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press)
• 1969: Animae, San Francisco: Kayak
• 1970: The Carrier of Ladders, New York: Atheneum – winner of the Pulitzer Prize
• 1970: Signs, illustrated by A. D. Moore; Iowa City, Iowa: Stone Wall Press
• 1973: Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment, New York: Atheneum
• 1975: The First Four Books of Poems, containing A Mask for Janus, The Dancing Bears, Green with Beasts, and The Drunk in the Furnace, New York: Atheneum; (reprinted in 2000, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press)
• 1977: The Compass Flower, New York: Atheneum
• 1978: Feathers From the Hill, Iowa City, Iowa: Windhover
• 1982: Finding the Islands, San Francisco: North Point Press
• 1983: Opening the Hand, New York: Atheneum
• 1988: The Rain in the Trees, New York: Knopf
• 1988: Selected Poems, New York: Atheneum
• 1993: Travels: Poems, New York: Knopf – winner of the 1993 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
• 1996: The Vixen: Poems, New York: Knopf
• 1997: Flower and Hand: Poems, 1977–1983 Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press
• 1998: The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative, a "novel-in-verse" New York: Knopf
• 1999: The River Sound: Poems, New York: Knopf
• 2001: The Pupil, New York: Knopf
• 2005: Migration: New and Selected Poems, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press – winner of the National Book Award for Poetry
• 2005: Present Company, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press
• 2008: The Shadow of Sirius, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press – winner of the Pulitzer Prize; 2009: Tarset, Northumberland, UK: Bloodaxe Books
• 2014: The Moon Before Morning, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press; Hexham, Northumberland, UK: Bloodaxe Books
• 2016: Garden Time, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press; Hexham, Northumberland, UK: Bloodaxe Books
• 2017: The Essential W. S. Merwin, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press

Prose

• 1970: The Miner's Pale Children, New York: Atheneum (reprinted in 1994, New York: Holt)
• 1977: Houses and Travellers, New York: Atheneum (reprinted in 1994, New York: Holt)
• 2002: The Mays of Ventadorn, National Geographic Directions Series; Washington: National Geographic
• 2004: The Ends of the Earth, essays, Washington: Shoemaker & Hoard

Plays

• 1956: Darkling Child (with Dido Milroy), produced that year
• 1957: Favor Island, produced this year at Poets' Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (broadcast in 1958 by Third Programme, British Broadcasting Corporation)
• 1961: The Gilded West, produced this year at Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, England

Translations

• 1959: The Poem of the Cid, London: Dent (American edition, 1962, New York: New American Library)
• 1960: The Satires of Persius, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press
• 1961: Some Spanish Ballads, London: Abelard (American edition: Spanish Ballads, 1961, New York: Doubleday Anchor)
• 1962: The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes: His Fortunes and Adversities, a Spanish novella; New York: Doubleday Anchor
• 1963: The Song of Roland
• 1969: Selected Translations, 1948–1968, New York: Atheneum – winner of the PEN Translation Prize
• 1969: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, poems by Pablo Neruda; London: Jonathan Cape (reprinted in 2004 with an introduction by Christina Garcia, New York: Penguin Books)
• 1969: Products of the Perfected Civilization, Selected Writings of Chamfort, also author of the introduction; New York: Macmillan
• 1969: Voices: Selected Writings of Antonio Porchia, Chicago: Follett (reprinted in 1988 and 2003, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press)
• 1969: Transparence of the World, poems by Jean Follain, New York: Atheneum (reprinted in 2003, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press)
• 1971: "Eight Quechua Poems", The Hudson Review
• 1974: Osip Mandelstam: Selected Poems (with Clarence Brown), New York: Oxford University Press (reprinted in 2004 as The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam, New York: The New York Review of Books)
• 1977: Sanskrit Love Poetry (with J. Moussaieff Masson), New York: Columbia University Press (published in 1981 as Peacock's Egg: Love Poems from Ancient India, San Francisco: North Point Press)
• 1977: Vertical Poetry, poems by Roberto Juarroz; San Francisco: Kayak (reprinted in 1988; San Francisco: North Point Press)
• 1978: Euripides' Iphigeneia at Aulis (with George E. Dimock Jr.), New York: Oxford University Press
• 1979: Selected Translations, 1968–1978, New York: Atheneum
• 1981: Robert the Devil, an anonymous French play; with an introduction by the translator; Iowa City, Iowa: Windhover
• 1989: Sun at Midnight, poems by Musō Soseki (with Soiku Shigematsu)
• 2000: Purgatorio from The Divine Comedy of Dante; New York: Knopf
• 2002: Gawain and the Green Knight, a New Verse Translation, New York: Knopf; 2003: Tarset, Northumberland, UK: Bloodaxe Books
• 2013: Sun At Midnight, poems by Muso Soseki, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press (with Soiku Shigematsu) (updated and reissued)

As editor

• 1961: West Wind: Supplement of American Poetry, London: Poetry Book Society
• 1996: Lament for the Makers: A Memorial Anthology (compiler), Washington: Counterpoint

• The Union City Reporter March 12, 2006.