Merwin, W. S. (1927-2019), was an American poet and translator. His collections won two Pulitzer Prizes in poetry. He won the 1971 prize for The Carrier of Ladders (1970) and the 2009 prize for The Shadow of Sirius (2008). He was appointed poet laureate of the United States for 2010-2011.
Merwin’s poems are intense and impersonal. They deal with isolation, violence, and death as well as with moral values and the nature of reality. Merwin explored the strangeness of personal experience in “For the Anniversary of My Death.” He wrote about nature and animals in two early collections, The Dancing Bears (1954) and Green with Beasts (1956). His best-known poems are collected in The Lice (1967). Later collections include Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment (1973), Opening the Hand (1983), Travels (1993), The Vixen (1996), The River Sound (1999), The Pupil (2001), Migration (2005), Present Company (2005), The Moon Before Morning (2014), and Garden Time (2016).
Merwin won praise for his translations of Spanish and French literature. His most important translations include The Poem of the Cid (1959), The Song of Roland (1963), Selected Translations, 1948-1968 (1968), and Selected Translations, 1968-1978 (1979).
Merwin’s prose works are collected in The Miner’s Pale Children (1970), Houses and Travellers (1977), Unframed Originals (1982), Regions of Memory (1987), The Ends of the Earth (2004), and Summer Doorways: A Memoir (2005). William Stanley Merwin was born on Sept. 30, 1927, in New York City. He died on March 15, 2019.
