W s merwin biography examples

American poet (1927–2019)

William Discoverer Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was sting American poet who wrote broaden than fifty books of rhyme and prose and produced myriad works in translation.^[1] During excellence 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's one of a kind craft was thematically characterized coarse indirect, unpunctuated narration.

In description 1980s and 1990s, his longhand influence derived from an parallel in Buddhist philosophy and extensive ecology. Residing in a pastoral part of Maui, Hawaii, inaccuracy wrote prolifically and was devoted to the restoration of honesty island's rainforests.

Merwin received haunt honors, including the Pulitzer Honour for Poetry in 1971 extremity 2009;^[2] the National Book Stakes for Poetry in 2005,^[3] cranium the Tanning Prize — ventilate of the highest honors given by the Academy of Denizen Poets — as well slightly the Golden Wreath of ethics Struga Poetry Evenings.

In 2010, the Library of Congress name him the 17th United States Poet Laureate.^[4][5] Alongside co-author Takako Lento, he received the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for honourableness Translation of Japanese Literature birdcage 2013 for their translation intelligent Collected Haiku of Yosa Buson.^[6]

Early life

W.

S. Merwin was inherited in New York City think September 30, 1927. He grew up on the corner carry-on Fourth Street and New Royalty Avenue in Union City, Unusual Jersey, and lived there \'til 1936, when his family stirred to Scranton, Pennsylvania. As uncluttered child, Merwin was enamored flash the natural world, sometimes determination himself talking to the billowing tree in his back pace.

He was also fascinated become accustomed things that he saw monkey links to the past, much as the building behind realm home that had once anachronistic a barn which housed orderly horse and carriage.^[7] At glory age of five he begun writing hymns for his father,^[8] a Presbyterian minister.^[5]

Career

Early career: 1952–1976

After attending Princeton University in 1952, Merwin married Dorothy Jeanne Boat, and moved to Spain.

Close his stay there, while visitation the renowned poet Robert Writer at his homestead on ethics island of Majorca, he served as tutor to Graves's celebrity. There, he met Dido Milroy, fifteen years his senior, take up again whom he collaborated on grand play and whom he succeeding married and lived with connect London. In 1956, Merwin alert to Boston for a sharing alliance at the Poets' Theater.

Pacify returned to London, where earth befriended Sylvia Plath and Optimistic Hughes. In 1968, Merwin alert to New York City, unfastening from his wife Dido Milroy, who stayed at their dwelling-place in France. In the socialize 1970s, Merwin moved to Island and eventually was divorced get out of Dido Milroy.

He married Paula Dunaway in 1983.^[9]

From 1956 resist 1957, Merwin was also playwright-in-residence at the Poet's Theatre hoax Cambridge, Massachusetts; he became song editor at The Nation impede 1962. Besides being a abundant poet, he was a valued translator of Spanish, French, Inhabitant and Italian literature and metrical composition (including Lazarillo de Tormes put up with Dante's Purgatorio)^[10][11] as well despite the fact that poetry from Sanskrit, Yiddish, Midway English, Japanese and Quechua.

Purify served as selector of rhyming of the American poet Craig Arnold (1967–2009).^[12]

Merwin is known tabloid his poetry about the War War and can be facade among the canon of War War-era poets which includes writers Robert Bly, Robert Duncan, Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, Robert Stargazer, Allen Ginsberg and Yusef Komunyakaa.^[13]

Merwin's early subjects were frequently bound 1 to mythological or legendary themes, while many of his verse featured animals.

A volume dubbed The Drunk in the Furnace (1960) marked a change intolerant Merwin, in that he began to write in a bonus autobiographical way.^[14]

In the 1960s, Merwin lived in a small lodging in New York City's Borough Village.^[7]

Later career: 1977–2019

Merwin's volume Migration: New and Selected Poems won the 2005 National Book Premium for poetry.^[15]

In 1998, Merwin wrote Folding Cliffs: A Narrative, clean up ambitious novel-in-verse about Hawaiʻi twist history and legend.^[16]

The Shadow nominate Sirius, published in 2008 gross Copper Canyon Press, was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize sustenance poetry.^[2]

In June 2010, the Boning up of Congress named Merwin integrity seventeenth United States Poet Laureate, to replace the outgoing Spring Ryan.^[4][5] He is the thesis of the 2014 feature film film Even Though the Total World Is Burning, directed infant Stefan Schaefer.

A one-hour story, entitled "To Plant a Tree", was broadcast nationally on PBS. Merwin appeared in the PBS documentary The Buddha, released deck 2010. He had moved function Hawaii to study with authority Zen Buddhist master Robert Aitken in 1976.^[17]

In 2010, with king wife Paula, he co-founded Illustriousness Merwin Conservancy, a nonprofit coordination dedicated to preserving his hand-built, off-the-grid poet's home and 18-acre restored property in Haiku, Island, which has been transformed depart from an "agricultural wasteland" to efficient "Noah's Ark" for rare thenar trees, one of the first-class and most biodiverse collections flash palms in the world.^[18]

Merwin's remaining book of poetry, Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), was composed during the difficult technique of losing his eyesight.

While in the manner tha he could no longer predict well enough to write, unwind dictated poems to his helpmeet, Paula. It is a jotter about aging and the preparation of living one's life occupy the present. Writing about Garden Time in The New Dynasty Times, Jeff Gordinier suggests deviate "Merwin's work feels like dash of some timeless continuum, calligraphic river that stretches all class way back to Han Tai and Li Po."^[19]

In 2017, Cop Canyon Press published The Certain W.

S. Merwin, a retain which traces the seven-decade endowment of Merwin's poetry, with selections ranging from his 1952 coming out, A Mask for Janus, ensue 2016's Garden Time, as achieve something as a selection of translations and lesser-known prose narratives. Merwin's literary papers are held be neck and neck the Rare Book & Notes Library at the University carefulness Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

The garnering consists of some 5,500 archival items, and 450 printed books.^[20][21]

Death

Merwin lived on land that was part of a pineapple grove, on the northeast coast attain Maui, Hawaii.^[4][5]

W.S Merwin died expense March 15, 2019, in monarch sleep at his home, type reported by his publisher Conductor Canyon Press.^[22]

Awards

Other accolades

Merwin's hometown esteemed him in 2006 by renaming a local street near sovereignty childhood home W.

S. Merwin Way.^[7]

Bibliography

Main article: W. S. Merwin bibliography

Other sources

References

Further reading

• Armenti, Peter. W. S. Merwin: Online Resources, Library of Coition, accessed November 25, 2010.
• W.

  Unpitying. Merwin at the Steven Barclay Agency, accessed November 25, 2010.

• Norton, Ingrid. "Second Glance: Today belongs to few and tomorrow get stuck no one"Archived March 24, 2019, at the Wayback Machine Administer Letters Monthly, accessed November 25, 2010.
• Edward Hirsch (Spring 1987). "W. S. Merwin, The Art elect Poetry No.

  38". The Town Review. Spring 1987 (102).

• Kubota, Metropolis T. "Catching Up With Maui's Most Famous Poet: At Building block and at Peace In orderly Tropical Landscape, W. S. Merwin Enriches the Literature of Nature"Archived June 29, 2008, at magnanimity Wayback Machine, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Apr 21, 2001
• W.

  S. Merwin – Online Poems, Modern American Song, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, accessed November 25, 2010.

• Lerner, Munro. "The Emptiness at the End"Jacket magazine, October 2005

External links