W. S. Merwin - Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://www.achievement.org:80/achiever/w-s-merwin/","20170621212848","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1498080528"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <title>W. S. Merwin - Academy of Achievement</title>  <meta name="description" content="The dynamic evolution of W.S. Merwin's verse -- allied with his accomplishments as translator, essayist and environmentalist -- have made him the most admired and imitated of American poets. He published his first volume of verse at age 24 and soon won acclaim for an impressive mastery of classical verse technique, combined with a vivid appreciation of animal life and the natural world. Merwin embraced the use of more colloquial language and contemporary themes in the 1960s, advocating experimentation in his influential essay "On Open Form." When his book聽The Carrier of Ladders聽won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Merwin took the occasion to voice his opposition to the Vietnam War. His poetry in the following decades increasingly reflected his passionate antiwar convictions. Long celebrated as an outstanding translator of Latin, French, Spanish and Italian literature, his attention turned to the poetry of China, Japan and India. For many years, he has lived on the island of Maui in Hawaii, and much of his poetry is suffused with the mythology and natural beauty of the islands. The meditative simplicity of his later work reflects his growing involvement with Buddhism and the philosophy of deep ecology. Fifty years of his poetry was collected in Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001, a volume honored with the National Book Award. Thirty-eight years after winning his first Pulitzer, W.S. Merwin received a second Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2008 volume,聽The Shadow of Sirius. In 2010 he was named Poet Laureate of the United States."/> <meta name="robots" content="noodp"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="W. S. Merwin - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">The dynamic evolution of W.S. Merwin's verse -- allied with his accomplishments as translator, essayist and environmentalist -- have made him the most admired and imitated of American poets. He published his first volume of verse at age 24 and soon won acclaim for an impressive mastery of classical verse technique, combined with a vivid appreciation of animal life and the natural world.</p> <p class="inputText">Merwin embraced the use of more colloquial language and contemporary themes in the 1960s, advocating experimentation in his influential essay "On Open Form." When his book聽<i>The Carrier of Ladders</i>聽won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Merwin took the occasion to voice his opposition to the Vietnam War. His poetry in the following decades increasingly reflected his passionate antiwar convictions.</p> <p class="inputText">Long celebrated as an outstanding translator of Latin, French, Spanish and Italian literature, his attention turned to the poetry of China, Japan and India. For many years, he has lived on the island of Maui in Hawaii, and much of his poetry is suffused with the mythology and natural beauty of the islands. The meditative simplicity of his later work reflects his growing involvement with Buddhism and the philosophy of deep ecology. Fifty years of his poetry was collected in <i>Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001</i>, a volume honored with the National Book Award. Thirty-eight years after winning his first Pulitzer, W.S. Merwin received a second Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2008 volume,聽<i>The Shadow of Sirius</i>. In 2010 he was named Poet Laureate of the United States.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/merwin-2009summit-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">The dynamic evolution of W.S. Merwin's verse -- allied with his accomplishments as translator, essayist and environmentalist -- have made him the most admired and imitated of American poets. He published his first volume of verse at age 24 and soon won acclaim for an impressive mastery of classical verse technique, combined with a vivid appreciation of animal life and the natural world.</p> <p class="inputText">Merwin embraced the use of more colloquial language and contemporary themes in the 1960s, advocating experimentation in his influential essay "On Open Form." When his book聽<i>The Carrier of Ladders</i>聽won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Merwin took the occasion to voice his opposition to the Vietnam War. His poetry in the following decades increasingly reflected his passionate antiwar convictions.</p> <p class="inputText">Long celebrated as an outstanding translator of Latin, French, Spanish and Italian literature, his attention turned to the poetry of China, Japan and India. For many years, he has lived on the island of Maui in Hawaii, and much of his poetry is suffused with the mythology and natural beauty of the islands. The meditative simplicity of his later work reflects his growing involvement with Buddhism and the philosophy of deep ecology. Fifty years of his poetry was collected in <i>Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001</i>, a volume honored with the National Book Award. Thirty-eight years after winning his first Pulitzer, W.S. Merwin received a second Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2008 volume,聽<i>The Shadow of Sirius</i>. In 2010 he was named Poet Laureate of the United States.</p>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="W. S. Merwin - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/merwin-2009summit-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/>  <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://s.w.org/"/> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/web/20170621212848cs_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/dist/styles/main-2a51bc91cb.css"> </head> <body class="achiever-template-default single single-achiever postid-2821 w-s-merwin sidebar-primary">  <header class="main-header bg-black"> <div class="search-container clearfix"> <div class="container"> <a class="brand" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/"> <img class="logo" src="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/logo@2x.png" alt="Academy of Achievement"/> </a> <div class="search-form__container"> <form 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data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/merwin-2009summit-Feature-Image-2800x1120-380x152.jpg [(max-width:544px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/merwin-2009summit-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg [(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/merwin-2009summit-Feature-Image-2800x1120-1400x560.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">W. S. Merwin</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Former Poet Laureate of the United States</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-2821 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-poet"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">I think poetry goes back to the invention of language itself.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> September 30, 1927 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p>Born in New York City, William Stanley Merwin spent most of his childhood in Union City, New Jersey, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was preoccupied with poetry and the magic of words from an early age. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and Merwin began writing hymns for his father’s church at age five. A sympathetic high school Spanish teacher encouraged his verse-making, and urged him to try his hand at translating the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.</p> <p>Although his parents lacked the means to send him to college, he won an academic scholarship to Princeton University, where he waited on tables at one of the school’s elite dining clubs to help pay his expenses. At Princeton, he fell under the influence of the prominent critic and poet R.P. Blackmur and his graduate assistant, the poet John Berryman. Merwin acquired a thorough grounding in the fundamentals of poetry and began to seriously consider a career in literature. After graduation, he stayed at Princeton for another year to continue his study of Romance languages, preparing for his future work as a translator of French, Spanish, Latin and Italian literature.</p> <figure id="attachment_11070" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11070 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-010-merwin-Merwin-W.S._Getty_7937499.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11070 size-full lazyload" alt="Poet and activist W.S. Merwin in the 1960s. (Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="3389" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-010-merwin-Merwin-W.S._Getty_7937499.jpg 2280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-010-merwin-Merwin-W.S._Getty_7937499-256x380.jpg 256w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-010-merwin-Merwin-W.S._Getty_7937499-511x760.jpg 511w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-010-merwin-Merwin-W.S._Getty_7937499.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and anti-war activist W.S. Merwin in the 1960s. (Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>Out of school, Merwin found work as a private tutor to the children of rich families. In a fateful development, he was hired to tutor the son of the British author Robert Graves, who lived on the Spanish island of Majorca. Primarily a poet, Graves had won renown with his memoir of combat in the First World War, <em>Goodbye to All That</em>. He was also well-known for his novels of ancient Rome, such as <em>I, Claudius</em>, and for his study of mythology, <em>The White Goddess</em>. Through Graves and his friends, Merwin met many of the great names in the English literary world, including the most influential poet of the era, the American-born T.S. Eliot. After leaving the Graves household, Merwin moved to London, where he made translations for the BBC, including the Spanish verse epic <em>El Cid</em>.</p> <figure id="attachment_18680" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-18680 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-009-merwin-2008konasummit1375RobertGraves-1.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-18680 size-full lazyload" alt="The British poet, novelist and classical scholar Robert Graves (1895-1985), on a rare visit to London in 1972. W.S. Merwin tutored Graves's son on the island of Majorca in the 1950s. (AP Images)" width="2280" height="1585" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-009-merwin-2008konasummit1375RobertGraves-1.jpg 2280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-009-merwin-2008konasummit1375RobertGraves-1-380x264.jpg 380w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-009-merwin-2008konasummit1375RobertGraves-1-760x528.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-009-merwin-2008konasummit1375RobertGraves-1.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The British poet, novelist and classical scholar Robert Graves (1895-1985), on a rare visit to London in 1972. W.S. Merwin tutored Graves’s son on the island of Majorca in the 1950s. Through Robert Graves, Merwin met many of the great names in the English literary world, including the most influential poet of the era, T.S. Eliot. (AP Images)</figcaption></figure><p>In 1952, when Merwin was only 24, a volume of his verse, <em>The Mask of Janus</em>, was accepted for publication by the Yale Younger Poets series. The series was edited by the poet W.H. Auden, second only to Eliot in the English-speaking world. Auden’s praise brought Merwin to the attention of the poetry-reading public. Merwin’s early verse showed the strong influence of Graves and of Eliot’s old friend Ezra Pound, with its use of traditional forms, and its wide-ranging allusions to classical literature and mythology. Merwin’s sensitive observation of nature and animals was distinctly his own and would come to the fore in his next collections, <em>The Dancing Bears</em> and <em>Green With Beasts</em>.</p> <figure id="attachment_11061" style="width: 2109px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11061 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11061 size-full lazyload" alt="W.S. Merwin, poet, translator and environmental activist. (Photo by Mark Hanauer)" width="2109" height="2862" data-sizes="(max-width: 2109px) 100vw, 2109px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer.jpg 2109w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer-280x380.jpg 280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer-560x760.jpg 560w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">W.S. Merwin, poet, translator and environmental activist.</figcaption></figure><p>For many years, Merwin and his English wife, Dido Milroy, lived in a farmhouse in Southwest France, a setting he would describe in his 1992 book, <em>The Lost Uplands</em>. At the time, Merwin was immersed in medieval literature and consumed with the idea of creating modern verse drama. He returned to the United States in 1956 to serve as playwright-in-residence at the Poets Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he made the acquaintance of other young poets — Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich and Donald Hall — who were all trying to find a contemporary voice for American poetry. In this setting, Merwin eventually lost interest in verse drama. His turn away from classical models, to contemporary diction and concerns, was marked with the 1960 publication of his book <em>The Drunk in the Furnace</em>. On returning to London, he befriended the poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, who were also moving poetry away from the formality of Eliot’s generation to a more colloquial style and more personal subject matter. The success of Merwin’s new direction was affirmed when his 1963 volume, <em>The Moving Target</em>, received the National Book Award. In the same year, Merwin published his translation of the medieval French epic <em>The Song of Roland</em>.</p> <p>Separated from his wife, Merwin spent more of his time in New York City, and served as poetry editor of the liberal weekly <em>The Nation</em>. In his 1967 volume, <em>The Lice</em>, Merwin pursued a more experimental course in his verse, embracing the irregular meters he propounded in a much-discussed essay, “On Open Form.” When he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1970 book, <em>The Carrier of Ladders</em>, he took the occasion to publicize his opposition to the Vietnam War, prompting a public split with W.H. Auden. In addition to the 1973 collection, <em>Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment</em>, Merwin’s activities in the 1970s included collaborations with other scholars, producing English translations of works from Chinese, Japanese, Greek and Russian.  His 1978 volume, <em>Feathers from the Hill</em>, received the Bollingen Prize, completing a trifecta of the most coveted awards in American poetry.</p> <figure id="attachment_11071" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11071 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11071 lazyload" alt="The poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973) was one of the first to recognize W.S. Merwin's talent. He published Merwin's first book and supplied an enthusiastic introduction. The two men quarreled in print over Merwin's opposition to the Vietnam War. (Mark Gerson. 漏 Bettmann/CORBIS)" width="2280" height="3179" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658.jpg 2280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658-273x380.jpg 273w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658-545x760.jpg 545w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973) was one of the first to recognize W.S. Merwin’s talent. He published Merwin’s first book and supplied an enthusiastic introduction. The men quarreled over Merwin’s opposition to the Vietnam War.</figcaption></figure><p>While living in New York City, Merwin met Paula Dunaway, an editor of children’s books. The couple married in 1983.  After a number of visits to Hawaii, the Merwins settled on the island of Maui, a setting reflected in his books of the 1980s: <em>Finding the Islands</em>, <em>Opening the Hand</em> and <em>The Rain in the Trees</em>. His 1998 book, <em>The Folding Cliffs,</em> is a verse narrative of Hawaiian history and legend. More recent books include the poetry collections <em>The River Sound</em> and <em>The Pupil</em> ,as well as translations of Dante’s <em>Purgatorio</em> and the medieval romance <em>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</em>.</p> <figure id="attachment_11062" style="width: 1995px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11062 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11062 lazyload" alt="W.S. Merwin in Washington, D.C. in 1994. He came to Washington to receive the first annual $100,000 Tanning Prize from the Academy of American Poets. (AP Images/stf)" width="1995" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 1995px) 100vw, 1995px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104.jpg 1995w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104-505x760.jpg 505w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1994: Merwin came to Washington to receive the $100,000 Tanning Prize from the Academy of American Poets.</figcaption></figure><p>His other prose works include <em>The Mays of Netadorn</em>, published by National Geographic Directions, and <em>The Ends of the Earth</em>, a collection of his essays on nature and exploration. In 1994, he became the first recipient of the Tanning Prize, a $100,000 award presented by the Academy of American Poets at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. Fifty years of Merwin’s poetry were collected in <em>Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001</em>, a volume honored with the National Book Award. Merwin’s anti-war convictions have not diminished with the years. In 2003, he returned to Washington with a delegation of “Poets Against the War” to protest the planned American invasion of Iraq. Two years later, Merwin published a brilliantly lucid memoir, <em>Summer Doorways</em>.</p> <figure id="attachment_11066" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11066 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-006-merwin-2008konasummit1375.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11066 size-full lazyload" alt="W.S. Merwin receives the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement from author Frank McCourt at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii." width="2280" height="1725" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-006-merwin-2008konasummit1375.jpg 2280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-006-merwin-2008konasummit1375-380x288.jpg 380w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-006-merwin-2008konasummit1375-760x575.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-006-merwin-2008konasummit1375.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">W.S. Merwin receives the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement from Awards Council member and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Kona, Hawaii.</figcaption></figure><p>In 2009, W.S. Merwin was awarded a second Pulitzer Prize for his collection of new poems, <em>The Shadow of Sirius</em>. The following year the Library of Congress selected him to serve as the nation’s 17th Poet Laureate. Since his appointment, Merwin’s poems have come to play a distinct role in the public life of the United States. In January 2011, when nine people were killed and 13 wounded during the attempted assassination of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, W.S. Merwin’s poem “To the New Year” was read aloud as the closing words of a nationally televised memorial service.</p> <figure id="attachment_11074" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11074 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-014-merwin-Merwin-with-Obama.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-11074 lazyload" alt="U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin and President Barack Obama share a lighthearted moment in the Oval Office, October 25, 2010. (Courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. W.S. Merwin)" width="2280" height="1508" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-014-merwin-Merwin-with-Obama.jpg 2280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-014-merwin-Merwin-with-Obama-380x251.jpg 380w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-014-merwin-Merwin-with-Obama-760x503.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-014-merwin-Merwin-with-Obama.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2010: Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin and President Barack Obama share a lighthearted moment in the Oval Office.</figcaption></figure><p>Over the years, Merwin became increasingly interested in Buddhism and the philosophy of deep ecology.  He maintained a disciplined writing schedule, while devoting the rest of his energy to the preservation of Hawaii’s environment and the restoration of the rain forest around his home. The Merwins planted thousands of palms on the 19 acres around their home, a former pineapple plantation near the town of Haiku.  The house they built was a model of environmental sustainability, with solar-powered electricity and a rain catchment system. The couple founded a nonprofit, the Merwin Conservancy, to preserve their home as a haven for writers, artists and activists, and to support others in pursuing a more sustainable way of life.  Paula Merwin died in 2017, but  W.S. Merwin continues to live in the home they created.  The rain forest the Merwins restored is now permanently protected by the Hawaiian Island Land Trust.  Home to more than 800 horticultural varieties, the Merwins’ forest is one of the greatest collections of palm species on Earth, “a living treasure house of palm DNA.”</p></body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 2008 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.poet">Poet</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> September 30, 1927 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">The dynamic evolution of W.S. Merwin’s verse — allied with his accomplishments as translator, essayist and environmentalist — have made him the most admired and imitated of American poets. He published his first volume of verse at age 24 and soon won acclaim for an impressive mastery of classical verse technique, combined with a vivid appreciation of animal life and the natural world.</p> <p class="inputText">Merwin embraced the use of more colloquial language and contemporary themes in the 1960s, advocating experimentation in his influential essay “On Open Form.” When his book聽<i>The Carrier of Ladders</i>聽won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Merwin took the occasion to voice his opposition to the Vietnam War. His poetry in the following decades increasingly reflected his passionate antiwar convictions.</p> <p class="inputText">Long celebrated as an outstanding translator of Latin, French, Spanish and Italian literature, his attention turned to the poetry of China, Japan and India. For many years, he has lived on the island of Maui in Hawaii, and much of his poetry is suffused with the mythology and natural beauty of the islands. The meditative simplicity of his later work reflects his growing involvement with Buddhism and the philosophy of deep ecology. Fifty years of his poetry was collected in <i>Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001</i>, a volume honored with the National Book Award. Thirty-eight years after winning his first Pulitzer, W.S. Merwin received a second Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2008 volume,聽<i>The Shadow of Sirius</i>. In 2010 he was named Poet Laureate of the United States.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/-x55chxskSs?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=3341&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_33_15_08.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_33_15_08.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry</h2> <div class="sans-2">Kailua-Kona, Hawaii</div> <div class="sans-2">July 3, 2008</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You have lived in two exceptionally beautiful places, Hawaii and the South of France. As a poet, do you find it necessary to surround yourself with nature, or is it the other way around, that the nature inspires the poetry?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s2">W.S. Merwin: I never thought of it as a program. I used to live in New York and I wrote. I think if you’re a poet, or whatever kind of artist you are, you want to be able to write or compose or paint anywhere. But…</span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/RFvWNzsGrZo?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_10_42_09.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_10_42_09.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I remember one day talking to a bunch of friends crossing the campus in college, and listening to what they were thinking of doing with their lives, and I thought, “They don’t care about where they’re going to be living.” And to me, it’s terribly important where I am. The place is enormously important. I want to live in <i>places</i>. I don’t want to live in <i>situations</i> all of the time, and they’re talking about situations. I mean, I know how to make a living somehow, but that’s not really what I care about. I wouldn’t have known how to say it, but I knew that one thing that was terribly important was a <i>place</i>. So I don’t know, I had a retired maiden aunt who left me $800, which was all she had when she died, and my mother put it in bonds, and I had $1200 when I was in my early 20s, and I had it when I found that ruined farmhouse that had been not lived in for almost 50 years. And the lady who owned it sold it to me for $1200. I said, “How much would you sell it for?” after a long conversation when she wouldn’t sell it, and her husband said, “You better sell it, because it’s going to fall down.” So after tears, she said she’d sell it, and then the price she named was $1200 and was translated into francs. I put out my hand just like that and I’m very glad I did. It looked straight down 400 feet to the Dordogne, and it’s the whole valley of the Dordogne.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_11078" style="width: 1914px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11078 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-A-young-W.S.-Merwin.-Credit-Estate-of-W.S.-Merwin.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11078 size-full lazyload" alt="A young W.S. Merwin. (Credit: Estate of W.S. Merwin)" width="1914" height="1076" data-sizes="(max-width: 1914px) 100vw, 1914px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-A-young-W.S.-Merwin.-Credit-Estate-of-W.S.-Merwin.jpg 1914w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-A-young-W.S.-Merwin.-Credit-Estate-of-W.S.-Merwin-380x214.jpg 380w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-A-young-W.S.-Merwin.-Credit-Estate-of-W.S.-Merwin-760x427.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-A-young-W.S.-Merwin.-Credit-Estate-of-W.S.-Merwin.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">A young W.S. Merwin. (Credit: Estate of W.S. Merwin)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What town is that in?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1">W.S. Merwin: There isn’t any town. It’s a little tiny hamlet. It had about nine houses in it, they were all peasants at the time. Now they don’t farm anymore. Do you know where Toulouse is? It’s halfway between Toulouse and Limoges in the Southwest.</span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s2"><b>Later you chose to move to Hawaii. When did that happen?</b></span></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/sziIl2pG82E?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_33_15_08.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_33_15_08.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">W.S. Merwin: I came out here in the ’60s to do a reading over at the university and I fell in love with it.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>But it was kind of unreal to me, and then I came back again a few years later, and I spent longer, and I got to meet people, and a teacher in particular that I really wanted to see more of.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>My marriage had broken up in France years before, and my former wife wanted to live in my house over there, so I let her stay there, and I didn’t have anywhere to live except a little tiny apartment in New York.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>I decided that I just wanted to spend more time out here, and little by little I got hooked. Quite fast, in fact.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>That’s understandable.</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1">W.S. Merwin: I’m still hooked. I love it more all of the time.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>We’d like to hear about your childhood too. You grew up in urban surroundings, didn’t you?</b></span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/9At7Vm4rxpI?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=82&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_25_57_17.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_25_57_17.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">W.S. Merwin: Across the river from New York, in a place called Union City, which is right up 鈥斅爄t used to be, before that, West Hoboken 鈥斅爄t is just up the hill from the Palisades, from Hoboken, and from my father’s church I could look down on the harbor.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>I was fascinated as a small child to kneel up at a window there and just spend hours watching the traffic on the river, the river traffic, which was quite different then, there was a lot more of it.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>Very beautiful, I thought, and I still have wonderfully clear images of it still there. I mean I can still see the ferry barges taking 鈥斅營 mean, not just the ferries, the passenger ferries, but these things that would take a whole train on a series of barges across the river, and ships going up and down in the afternoon light.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>It was very, very beautiful.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>Everything is gone. I mean the traffic is gone. The Hoboken harbor has changed completely.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>My father’s church has long since, many years ago 鈥斅爂one.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>And the house is still there, but unrecognizable.<span class="Apple-converted-space">聽 </span>I’ve been back and seen it.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>We’ve read that you started writing hymns for your father’s church as a young boy. When did you start doing that?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s2">W.S. Merwin: When I could make letters with a pencil. I was fascinated by hymns. It was one of the things that most fascinated me about having to go to church every Sunday, which I took for granted, like putting on clean clothes on Sunday and all that. You had to do that.</span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y6pLARY9o0Q?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=86&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_33_58_29.Still009-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_33_58_29.Still009-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>So I had to listen to all of these morning services, and I was allowed to do drawings and things, and then do what I wanted with a little pad and pencil. And I was fascinated by two things.聽 One of them was the language of the King James version of the Bible 鈥斅爓hich was different from the language that we spoke 鈥斅爐he language of the psalms.聽 There was a whole lot of the Bible that I got to know by heart without even thinking about it, and the language of the hymns: “the spacious firmament on high” and “the blue ethereal sky.”聽 I didn’t know what half of the words meant, thought it was wonderful, you know.聽 It’s funny, the way it rhymed, and so I wanted to write that. And my mother read to us, which is very important.聽 She read Stevenson’s <i>Child’s Garden of Verses</i> and she read Tennyson, “The Brook,” and a lot of poems like that.聽 And that’s wonderful when parents read — not just stories — but poems to their children, because the language of poetry is different from the language of prose, and children pick up that language.聽 And if they can pick it up very early, it’s really very, very important.聽 They are likely to always love it if they do.聽 I suspect that they really naturally do.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">We’ve got an educational system that doesn’t encourage it at all, any more than they encourage listening to Mozart. And you know, one of the strange things is that I don’t think that’s natural. I have a friend, the guy who wrote <i>Equus</i> and <i>Amadeus</i>, Peter Schaffer. Peter is a friend, and I heard Peter give a brilliant lecture on Shakespeare a few years ago and we had a long, wonderful conversation afterwards. Peter’s gay and he had a boyfriend who was a young officer and who never read anything. He wasn’t interested in reading.</span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/zjfn-RoJLIA?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_17_34_12.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-MasterEdit.00_17_34_12.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Peter one evening said, “I’m going out and I’ll be back quite late because I’m going to the theater.” And his friend said, “Well, what are you going to go and see?” He said, “Well, it’s nothing that would interest you at all. I’d take you, but I don’t think you would be interested.” He said, “What is it?” He said, “Well, it’s a play by Shakespeare.” He’d never heard of Shakespeare. He said, “It’s a new production of <i>Hamlet</i> and I want to see it.” “Well,” he said, “I’d like to go and see it if it interests you that much.” So he got him a ticket and he went along. And this guy who had never been to a play, never read anything like it, gets through the first scene of <i>Hamlet</i> on the battlements with the ghost, and the ghost gets into the banquet scene afterwards, and he turns and grabs Peter by the shoulders and says, “Does anyone know about this play?” he said. He thought it was the most exciting thing he had ever seen, that first scene, the battle scene. I’ve seen kids sit up in that <i>Shakespeare in Love</i> movie, which I didn’t like very much, but Gwyneth Paltrow doing Juliet, and these kids put down their popcorn and sit up on the edge of their seats. They never heard anything like this. It’s not so strange. They hear it. It’s too bad that it’s neglected, because it’s a whole dimension to their life that they are not getting.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_11073" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11073 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-013-merwin-2008konasummit1586.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11073 size-full lazyload" alt="Two recipients of the Pulitizer Prize: Poet W.S. Merwin and memoirist Frank McCourt at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. (漏 Academy of Achievement)" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-013-merwin-2008konasummit1586.jpg 2280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-013-merwin-2008konasummit1586-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-013-merwin-2008konasummit1586-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-013-merwin-2008konasummit1586.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Recipients of the Pulitizer Prize: W.S. Merwin and Frank McCourt at the 2008 International Achievement Summit.</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>The arts are neglected in the school system these days, as if they’re some kind of luxury.</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s2">W.S. Merwin: Yes. I think they’ve always been essential to us.</span></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/5MnDG5IfXQ4?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=97&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-HDCAM-1of2-Orig.00_03_31_29.Still003-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Merwin-William-2008-HDCAM-1of2-Orig.00_03_31_29.Still003-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>When we talk about the extinction of species, I think the endangered species of the arts and of language and all these things are related. I don’t think there is any doubt about that. I think poetry goes back to the invention of language itself. I think one of the big differences between poetry and prose is that prose is about something, it’s got a subject and the subject comes first and it’s dealing with the subject. But poetry is something else, and we don’t know what it is (that) comes first. Prose is about something, but poetry is about what can’t be said. Why do people turn to poetry when all of a sudden the Twin Towers get hit, or when their marriage breaks up, or when the person they love most in the world drops dead in the same room? Because they can’t say it. They can’t say it at all, and they want something that addresses what can’t be said. I think that’s the big difference between poetry and prose. All the arts, in a way, are doing that, they are talking about, “<i>Dove sono</i>? (Where are they?)” What’s that? She can’t say it, can she? Where are they? Where are they? What has happened to those days?</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p><strong>What books did you like to read growing up?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Oh, some of them were pretty obvious. I must have read <em>Robinson Crusoe</em> four or five times and <em>Swiss Family Robinson</em> and <em>Treasure Island</em>, all of Stevenson. A book called <em>Ship’s Monkey</em> about a ship off to Borneo, and books about American Indians. I really taught myself to read because there was a book about Indians with pictures, a lot of pictures of Indians, and it was a children’s book, but it had a text at the bottom of each page and I couldn’t read the text. So I asked word by word what the words were until I could read the book about the Indians because I wanted to live in a place like the place they lived in, in the woods. So that taught — it was two things, I mean learning to read, because of a fascination with people who didn’t read and write, that’s sort of interesting. And realizing that early that I really wanted to live not in a city, but in the forest.</p> <p><strong>What was your father’s reaction to your original hymns?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Sort of a little pat on the head. He wasn’t opposed to them, but he wasn’t very interested. “Isn’t that nice.” I did illustrations for them, too.</p> <p><strong>When did you start thinking about writing professionally?</strong></p> <figure id="attachment_11062" style="width: 1995px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11062 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11062 size-full lazyload" alt="W.S. Merwin in Washington, D.C. in 1994. He came to Washington to receive the first annual $100,000 Tanning Prize from the Academy of American Poets. (AP Images/stf)" width="1995" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 1995px) 100vw, 1995px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104.jpg 1995w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104-505x760.jpg 505w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">W.S. Merwin in Washington, D.C. in 1994. He came to Washington to receive the first annual $100,000 Tanning Prize from the Academy of American Poets. (AP Images/stf)</figcaption></figure><p>W.S. Merwin: Seriously? By the time I was in college I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I thought that I had to do something else to make a living, and I don’t know what that will be, but I didn’t give it a thought. And I’m very glad I didn’t, because I don’t know if this was true for the people who were going to be corporate executives and hedge fund operators and things like that. I think it’s true for them, too, to some degree. The longer you can keep the options open, the longer you can keep the choices open, the better. And all of a sudden when I was in graduate school, this guy needed a tutor for his nephew, and the nephew was Peter Stuyvesant and this was the Stuyvesant family. So I had one year up in this extraordinary place one summer, which was an old deer park surrounded by 17 farms which were all part of the original estate, and that went back to the 17th century and earlier, late 16th century when the Dutch were there, before the English came.</p> <p><strong>Outside New York?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Yeah, in New Jersey, way over on the Delaware River, and then over to France. That’s what took me to Europe. And then from there, I had two other tutoring jobs. I couldn’t have done that if I had been following a career and got locked into it, wanting to do the academic track and everything. Nothing against teachers or teaching, it just wasn’t what I wanted to do at that point in my life. I think some of these smart kids make crucial decisions too early and get locked into something that will be apparently very successful, but may not be what they really want to be doing. And that is dangerous, because that’s where a lot of breakdowns and mid-life crisis and things like that come from. I have psychiatrist friends who have told me that this is the main body of their clientele, the people that come in. They have done all of the right things and why is their life so screwed up?</p> <p><strong>You decided to study romance languages at Princeton. What led you to that?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Well, I went to a very strict and severe Methodist prep school where I got a scholarship to wait on tables and so forth to pay my way through. And I really hated the place because it was so kind of puritanical and severe.</p> <p><strong>All boys?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: No, but it was worse than that. It was boys and girls, but they were kept separate and they weren’t allowed to speak to each other. So there they were getting nubile and very pretty and all of that and you got ten demerits for ever speaking to one and 20 demerits for doing it again and you got 30 and you were out for good. I had to be a good boy at home and now I’m supposed to be a good boy here and I really don’t like being a good boy. But there was one professor there whom I really loved and he wasn’t like that at all. He was the language professor, and he taught Spanish and French and German and he was a funny, funny, sweet, humane, highly cultivated man.</p> <p><strong>What was his name?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: His name was Lawrence Sampson. He died soon afterwards of heart failure, but he started me paying a lot of attention to languages, in particular Spanish, and then I went on to do the same thing when I got to college. Had a very interesting Spanish teacher in college who was so homesick for Spain and he was Spanish himself. I mean, not Mexican, but Spanish. He wanted some help translating Lorca — so the first modern poet I read was a Spanish poet, it was Lorca. <em>Romancero gitano</em> was the first book, and we translated that together. It was my first attempt at translation, too. And then I went on and met Ezra Pound in the crazy ward at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington.</p> <p><strong>You met him in the crazy ward?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Yeah, he was in the crazy ward. He was legally insane. I didn’t know anything about his politics, fortunately. I had to learn about it later.</p> <p><strong>He made broadcasts for the Axis during the war.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Yes, for the Fascists in Italy, and his anti-Semitism, dreadful things. It would have been very troubling. It’s always been very troubling once I did find out about it. But I loved some of his poems that I’d read, and his ear.</p> <p>Every poet who has come after owes him something, that is part of the enigma about Pound, whatever they think about his character. We owe him something from the way he heard English. And so I went to see him, and he said that I had to go on translating. He took me seriously as a poet and he said, “You should write every day…” should do all these things, and gave me a lot of advice. He loved giving advice.</p> <p><strong>Did you see signs of madness?</strong></p> <figure id="attachment_11068" style="width: 2250px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11068 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-008-merwin-2008konasummit1375EzraPound_AP451226012.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11068 size-full lazyload" alt="The American poet and translator Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in 1945. He was confined to a hospital for the criminally insane after making propaganda broadcasts for Fascist Italy during World War II. An early supporter of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, he also encouraged the young W.S. Merwin. (AP Images)" width="2250" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 2250px) 100vw, 2250px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-008-merwin-2008konasummit1375EzraPound_AP451226012.jpg 2250w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-008-merwin-2008konasummit1375EzraPound_AP451226012-285x380.jpg 285w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-008-merwin-2008konasummit1375EzraPound_AP451226012-570x760.jpg 570w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-008-merwin-2008konasummit1375EzraPound_AP451226012.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The American poet and translator Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in 1945. He was confined to a hospital for the criminally insane after making propaganda broadcasts for Fascist Italy during World War II. An early supporter of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, he also encouraged the young W.S. Merwin. (AP Images)</figcaption></figure><p>W.S. Merwin: No, he wasn’t mad. He was no more mad than he had ever been. He was nuts, but not mad. He had gone on the air for Mussolini and he had said really quite stupid, but very, very ill-judged things, bad things, pro-Mussolini, in the middle of the war. And the prosecution wanted to shoot him for a traitor right there in Italy. And there was a movement to prevent that. His defense lawyer was a Quaker and the safest thing to do was to say that he was insane. He was eccentric enough.</p> <p>Somebody asked T.S. Eliot — he and Ezra, they had known each other forever. I don’t know, Pound was so opinionated that you wondered how anybody could stand being around him very much, but he was brilliant, he was absolutely brilliant. Somebody asked Eliot — he had a lot to do with the final text of <em>The Waste Land</em>, you know, Pound did. He was very, very, very skillful and smart. And asked Eliot if Ezra was really crazy and he said, “Well, you know Ezra.”</p> <p><strong>What was the impact of working with John Berryman and R.P. Blackmur at Princeton? They were both poets too.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Oh, they were very important to me, both of them were. Berryman (was) hands-on about poetry and he was ruthless and merciless and he would destroy everything I wrote week by week. And you know, I learned a lot from him. Blackmur was one of the most brilliant literary intelligences I’ve ever been close to, and hearing him doing what he did, twice a week he had a sort of volunteer seminar, certain invited people could come and he would just sit at a table and talk about one chapter of <em>Ulysses</em>, for example, for three hours. No notes or anything. He was marvelous as a teacher. I mean, he seemed really not to be paying attention and then you realized he got everything about you. He was thinking about the right thing for you, too. I mean, he saved me from getting thrown out of college a number of times.</p> <p>I never did all of the right things. I never read the things I was supposed to. I always read lots of other things and some of the teachers got very impatient, especially in graduate school.</p> <p>There was a party — I heard about this afterwards — when Blackmur was there, and the dean of the graduate school was there, and he was one of the people who wanted to kick me out. And Blackmur said to him in the course of the evening, he said, “Did you ever hear about — in your knowledge of the English academic system did you ever hear about don…” whatever his name was, don Seymour Smith, or something like that. And the dean said, “No, I never did.” Blackmur said, “Well, you might not have because his only claim to historic recognition is that he’s the guy that got Shelley thrown out of Oxford.” The dean got the point. And they sort of put up with things that I’m sort of amazed by, that I got away with. Nowadays I don’t think it would matter so much, but I would read, something would send me off on a tangent, and I would read a whole lot of stuff, but it wasn’t what the assignment was about. It was related to the assignment, but it was on a whole different thing. And I did it over and over again. But I was reading endlessly, I couldn’t stop reading. But very often I would not bother with the assignment and go on to something else.</p> <p><strong>It sounds like poets in particular need to find their own voices and their own paths. It seems almost contradictory for a poet to be a conformist who follows all of the rules.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: I think that’s true. I don’t think there is any doubt about that. If they lose that, then they lose the whole thing. But you know, I think that’s true of everybody and I think that everybody has their own path. But if they don’t pay attention to it, or if they don’t look for it, if they don’t respect it, if they are not aware of it, they run into trouble. Their life becomes thinner and less satisfactory. Even distractions may be the thing that is helping you, if they are <em>your</em> distractions, if they are what you are really interested in.</p> <p><strong>Could you tell us about tutoring the son of Robert Graves?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: That was the third tutoring job.</p> <p><strong>Why couldn’t Robert Graves tutor his own son?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: He was doing a lot of writing. Robert wrote an enormous — I mean, Robert was a great model of working. People handle interruptions and distractions differently I’ve noticed, and Robert was very good at it. He wrote every day, alone for hours and hours in his study. If he had to come out and deal with a meal or with a crying baby or with somebody coming to the door, he would come and do it and then he would go right back into where he was working and keep it going. James Merrill, who is a dear friend of mine, a wonderful poet of the same generation, Jimmy used to say, “Oh yes, the interruptions are all part of the whole process.” It’s all right, he didn’t mind interruptions. I don’t like interruptions. Very often, if I get interrupted, very often I’m not even paying any attention to them, because I won’t leave what I’m doing. I think the people who deal with them better are wiser than I am, but I can’t change that, or if I can, I’m scared of losing something, I guess.</p> <p><strong>Did you develop a relationship with Robert Graves?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Oh, yeah, sure. It began with a honeymoon and a wonderful friendship across the generations. He was 30-some years older than I was, and he had had that whole life in World War I, and written <em>Good-Bye to All That</em>, and he was quite well known by then. And his poetry, of which there is still some of it that I like very much, and I learned a lot from it and from him. A brilliant, brilliant man.</p> <p><strong>What did you learn from him?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: I think the most valuable book is <em>The White Goddess</em>. It’s very controversial, and Robert cooked the books sometimes. He made up the mythology rather than being absolutely accurate, which is why it’s not altogether trustworthy, but it’s a very daring book. It’s called, “The Grammar of Poetic Myth,” <em>The White Goddess</em> is. And he saw the whole world — the whole value system — on the basis of a goddess, a goddess figure, not a male god figure, but a female figure, and she’s the goddess of lust and fear. I mean she’s not altogether gentle and easygoing. I thought when I read the book, before I went to Europe that this was a great metaphor, like something in Joseph Campbell or something like that. But I realized to my amazement and some consternation, after a while with Robert that Robert took it all quite literally, you know. He was turning into kind of a fundamentalist of his own kind, and he eventually got jealous and fought with every younger poet. I mean, this thing would happen, and he would have a sort of honeymoon with another and a great enthusiasm, they would be great buddies, and then something would go wrong and Robert said they are not true sons of the goddess and all of this other stuff and drum them out. It was kind of difficult because when we had our falling out, there I was with the job there. But I spent that year with him and I loved the place on the north shore of Majorca. And I went back on my own for another winter there and wrote the translation of the poem of <em>The Cid</em> for the BBC, to earn some money.</p> <p>One of the marvelous things that I think I feel so lucky about was that I went to see (T.S.) Eliot occasionally in London when I was there because of my relationship with Pound’s son, Omar.</p> <p>Omar introduced me to Eliot so then Eliot was very kind. He was very kind to Omar, he was very kind to me, and I smoked then, and he used to save me French cigarettes which people gave him and he didn’t smoke. And he was homesick and we would talk about the Ohio River and the steamboats.</p> <p><strong>Were you aware at the time how lucky you were, having these experiences?</strong></p> <figure id="attachment_11067" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11067 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-007-merwin-2008konasummit1375tselliot_AP5601190399.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11067 size-full lazyload" alt="T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) in his London office, 1956. The American-born Eliot was the most influential poet and critic of his era, and a generous supporter of the young W.S. Merwin. (AP Images)" width="2280" height="2858" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-007-merwin-2008konasummit1375tselliot_AP5601190399.jpg 2280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-007-merwin-2008konasummit1375tselliot_AP5601190399-303x380.jpg 303w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-007-merwin-2008konasummit1375tselliot_AP5601190399-606x760.jpg 606w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-007-merwin-2008konasummit1375tselliot_AP5601190399.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) in his London office, 1956. The American-born Eliot was the most influential poet and critic of his era, and a generous supporter of the young W.S. Merwin. (AP Images)</figcaption></figure><p>W.S. Merwin: I feel lucky about all of it, but that something I didn’t realize was happening at the time. Everything from that deer park and the farms of the Stuyvesants through really the whole thing with that farmhouse on the Dordogne and the year in Portugal and all of that, I was stumbling on places and ways of life and assumptions, a permanence of something that was very ancient, that had been there for a very long time and was just on the verge of disappearing. And if you went back even five years later, it was gone, it would have been gone and it was gone.</p> <p>I had a letter from Graves’s son William, who was the boy I tutored. He hated being tutored. We didn’t get along very well at all. The other kids I tutored, I got along fine with. William didn’t want to be tutored. He hated me and he had terrible fantasies about what a dreadful person I was. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working with William and finally threw up my hands and let him do what he wanted to do. But we’re in correspondence now, and he said, “In spite of all of the problems with Robert, you saw him probably at his best.” Ava Gardner came and called on Robert the following year and they started putting him on British television and he started earning a lot more money. He became a celebrity, and he just loved being a celebrity and it became more important than anything else.</p> <p><strong>You were in your 20s when W.H. Auden singled you out for the Yale Younger Poets series that he was editing. How did that come about?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: They would choose, out of a small number of manuscripts, the winner of that year’s Yale Younger Poets series. That was a very big deal for a while. Now there are many other setups like that around the country, and it’s a good thing, because they are publishing more books of poems. I don’t know the reason, but Auden did and I was very happy. I was then living in Portugal and it was wonderful news. It got good reviews and that was very nice.</p> <p><strong>Was that an important vote of confidence? Did it make you take yourself more seriously?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: I was sort of pigheaded. I was going to do it anyway, but it was very encouraging, sure it was.</p> <p><strong>Did you have any contact with Auden after that?</strong></p> <figure id="attachment_11071" style="width: 273px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><noscript><img class="size-medium wp-image-11071 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658-273x380.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-medium wp-image-11071 lazyload" alt="The poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973) was one of the first to recognize W.S. Merwin's talent. He published Merwin's first book and supplied an enthusiastic introduction. The two men quarreled in print over Merwin's opposition to the Vietnam War. (Mark Gerson. 漏 Bettmann/CORBIS)" width="273" height="380" data-sizes="(max-width: 273px) 100vw, 273px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658-273x380.jpg 273w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658-545x760.jpg 545w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658-273x380.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973) was one of the first to recognize W.S. Merwin’s talent. He published Merwin’s first book and supplied an enthusiastic introduction. The two men quarreled in print over Merwin’s opposition to the Vietnam War. (Mark Gerson. © Bettmann/CORBIS)</figcaption></figure><p>W.S. Merwin: Very slight. A couple things. Quite happy, very slight things. Auden was gay, a lot of Auden’s friends were. Auden had a sort of fixation on being gay, what he called “the Homintern.” He didn’t like his gay friends or himself associating too much with straight people. I thought it was kind of silly. But also, I had an awe of him, of Auden. He was a different generation, seemed much wider a gap then than it does now, but it was a considerable gap, that generation. We had mutual friends, and I called him up a few times in New York to ask him questions about things and he was always very friendly. But then we had an unhappy exchange not long before he died.</p> <p>I was supposed to go and read at the University of Buffalo, and I didn’t know until fairly close to the time of the reading that I was supposed to — this was at the time of the Vietnam War — I was supposed to sign a loyalty oath, not only to the Constitution of the United States, but if you please, to the Constitution of the State of New York, and I refused to sign the loyalty. We went around and around and around about all of the different ways around it, but they involved putting down my name and then putting riders under it that made it empty and I said that I don’t see why I should do that. I mean, I don’t believe in doing this, I don’t think this has anything to do with loyalty, I think it has to do with entrapment. And I won’t play the game and I just won’t do it. And at that time, it was $1,000 for the reading, and they said, “We won’t pay you,” and I said, “Well, we’ll see about that.” And finally I agreed to go because a friend — it was Robert Haas who invited me, and he was very embarrassed by the situation. He hadn’t known about it to begin with.</p> <p>I went and gave this talk about being loyal, what loyalty really meant and why I wouldn’t sign a loyalty oath and about the Vietnam War. And then I said — and I published the talk afterwards in <em>The New York Review of Books</em> — and passed the hat at the reading. I said, “This is a free reading,” and passed the hat, not for me, I said, for the war resisters who have gone to Canada. When war resisters leave, this money will go to them. So, I raised several thousand dollars for the war resisters and the University of Buffalo was angry as could be. And Auden wrote and said that if he didn’t know me — he didn’t know me very well — he would have thought the whole thing was a publicity stunt. And I wrote — I spent two days over the letter — answering Auden with deep respect saying, you know, we completely disagree. This was a public situation which I didn’t ask for, and I had a right to make a public statement at that time and to use it because I think we’re involved in something that is so wrong and so really shameful and we’ve told so many lies about it that if one has a strong position, one should speak out about it.</p> <p>I saw him once afterwards and we just — it was at a public thing, and we just shook hands and there was nothing to say. He wouldn’t back off anything, and I had apologized in print for offending him, but what could be said? And I was very sorry about that, because I really did admire him and had this dream about Auden, the day after he died. I arrived in Athens, and I went to see James Merrill and James knew Auden quite well. I mean they saw each other, saw a lot of each other. And I said, “I had this strange dream about Auden last night on the way here on the train. Fell asleep and I had this dream that Auden was lying in a cot, in a kind of place like a barracks and that he sat up in bed suddenly and he said something very important and I didn’t hear what he said and then I woke up.” And Jimmy said that he died last night.</p> <p><strong>Where do the subjects of your poems come from?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Oh, I’m sure I don’t know. Sometimes I know, but very seldom.</p> <p><strong>Do you have a ritual of writing every day or do you wait until you feel a poem coming on?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: No, I do think it’s important to have a ritual. I try to be very bearish about the mornings and do nothing, not get involved in the telephone or mail, unless there is something that really is incredibly urgent. I won’t deal with it until after lunch. I do all of that stuff later, so I have the morning to stare at paper and think about poems and things like that.</p> <p><strong>If you stare at the paper and nothing comes, do you force yourself to keep staring?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Yeah. I don’t know how it works, I really don’t. It comes from hearing things rather than from having ideas. I’ve got notes that I have made over the years, and they are very precious to me, and I sometimes ponder over the notes and see what I thought I was doing writing that down, where it was going. The notes are usually things that I seem to have overheard rather than — they are not ideas. There is a wonderful conversation that Zola — no, it wasn’t Zola, it was Degas. Degas and Mallarmé, the French poet Mallarmé, were good friends for a long time. And Degas had always wanted to be a poet and he said to Mallarmé, “I don’t understand it, year after year I’ve written poems and they are terrible, I know they are terrible, I know they aren’t any good at all.” And he said, “I don’t understand it, because I have such good ideas.” And Mallarmé said, “Oh, but poetry is not made with ideas; it’s made with words, you have to hear the words.”</p> <p><strong>We were interested in what you were saying earlier today about the interconnectedness of the arts.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Well, I don’t think any of these things are separate. I’ve spoken to some incredibly smart kids and they’re at a point where they’re beginning to think that smart is the whole thing, and smart isn’t the whole thing. One of the troubles with smart is that it makes divisions, it chops things up: “Mozart doesn’t have anything to do with business.” It depends on you. <em>You</em> are what Mozart and business have to do with each other. Look at where the connection is. It’s not just a relief from stress or anything like that, it’s something feeding some other part of yourselves that you need.</p> <figure id="attachment_11063" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11063 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-003-merwin-0985.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11063 size-full lazyload" alt="W.S. Merwin chats with author Michael Ondaatje at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii." width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-003-merwin-0985.jpg 2280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-003-merwin-0985-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-003-merwin-0985-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-003-merwin-0985.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">W.S. Merwin chats with author Michael Ondaatje at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>When we spoke to the late </strong><strong>Carol Shields</strong><strong>, the novelist, she suggested that fiction can explore a deeper reality than nonfiction can because it can get into the mind of a character. Perhaps poetry goes even farther than fiction in distilling what we are, how our minds work.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Yeah. There was a great essay years ago by Francis Fergusson on Hamlet. He starts by saying it is now 300 years that Hamlet is making fools of his critics. Because Hamlet is one of the supreme things in Shakespeare, in a forum that is both more primitive and more profound than philosophy, which is what’s happening all through that play. Shakespeare keeps changing the way it happens. It’s looking at the planet Earth, the whole thing is changing all of the time. Shakespeare is changing it all of the time, that’s the great genius. There is no point that you can grab it, that you can grab hold of that thing and say, “Yeah, that’s the whole thing.” Polonius’s boring speech to Laertes with all of the good advice? It’s very good advice, and Laertes is bored to death. It’s very hard to pick up that one. You can see the boredom and you can see also the wisdom.</p> <p><strong>Only this morning on public radio there was a discussion of who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Someone made the point that there are no extant letters from him and that if he was such an incredibly prolific writer he would have written notes to friends or something.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: I don’t know why. None of the other playwrights did. We don’t have anything from Dekker or Marlowe or Ben Johnson. You know, Ben Johnson was far better educated than Shakespeare and there must have been a correspondence, but nothing was saved. Of course, his house burned down and a lot of stuff was lost.</p> <p><strong>You have no doubt that Shakespeare was Shakespeare.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Oh no, I have no doubt about that at all. Furthermore, I think there are a whole bunch of things that Shakespeare wrote that we don’t even ascribe to Shakespeare. I think that the “Mad Tom” poem, that great long poem, wonderful poem, probably was Shakespeare. A lot of other people think so too.</p> <p><strong>Even in the prose passages in his plays, Shakespeare is always a poet.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Oh yes, there is no question. All the way from the beginning until the end. And he was also a great actor. I think he played Prospero in <em>The Tempest</em>. This is one of the great geniuses that has ever been. By the way, I love that quote from Michaelangelo someone mentioned this morning. Someone asked how he had done what he had done, and he said, “I just kept getting rid of all of the things that weren’t me.” But he also said that it’s an easy thing to be universal. Everybody is universal, and he recognized it. The great, great spirits like that do recognize that they are universal, but that everybody is universal. Everybody is complete, you are complete. Pay attention to it.</p> <p><strong>You said earlier that poets don’t want to write what anyone else has written. Could you tell us more about that?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: I think that it’s something that you’re born knowing. If you’re interested in writing something, then you want to write something that is really yours, that you’re saying something that <em>you</em> are saying. And obviously, not just want to do something that is an imitation, although you are learning all of the time. Everything that you know is of value to you. I didn’t mean to dismiss that. But if you rely on it and think that it’s all about knowing, it’s going to be very dull and boring and it’s not going to speak <em>for</em> anybody or <em>to</em> anybody. When you listen to Mozart or when you listen to Shakespeare, you don’t know what part of yourself is responding to it, and you don’t know what part of them it’s coming from. Somewhere in between is this poetry, this music. It’s that girl pouring milk from the pitcher.</p> <figure id="attachment_11064" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11064 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-004-merwin-2008konasummit0868.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11064 size-full lazyload" alt="Ellen McCourt, W.S. Merwin and his wife, Paula, enjoy the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii." width="2280" height="1572" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-004-merwin-2008konasummit0868.jpg 2280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-004-merwin-2008konasummit0868-380x262.jpg 380w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-004-merwin-2008konasummit0868-760x524.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-004-merwin-2008konasummit0868.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Ellen McCourt, W.S. Merwin and his wife, Paula, enjoy the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Like in the Vermeer painting?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Yeah. That’s the mystery, where does it exist? It’s not in us and it’s not there and it’s not in the experience of the other, but it’s all about experience, it’s all about attention. And yet I can’t touch the milk in the pitcher, I can’t hold onto those notes of Mozart. I don’t know the mystery of any single one line of Shakespeare, what makes it unforgettable. The more you hear it, the more you think it goes deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. I think that one thing is getting lost, like endangered species. I really think it’s all an extension of the same thing. It used to be that there were two things that I could always count on. Kids liked the arts to start with, and I don’t mean they liked Mozart. They liked to sing and dance and they liked to make up little plays on words and do all of those things. It was quite natural. And they always liked animals. Now I think that if you hand them a computer, they would much rather pay attention to that than either of those things, and I think that’s disturbing. However miraculous it is, it’s sort of terribly ingrown. It’s virtual reality instead of reality. I use a computer like everybody else, but I’m not in love with it and I’m happy when I don’t use it. To be hooked on it to that degree — I watch people, they get up in the morning and they go to the computer, and whatever else they’ve been doing, they go right back to the computer. I think that’s a fixation.</p> <p><strong>Like an addiction?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: It’s an addiction. People very close to me have got it and I’m just troubled to see it. I see kids being brought up that way, no contact with animals, no contact with growing and living things, very little social life and this thing substituting for all of them, and I find that very troubling. I expect that sounds limited and old-fashioned or something of the kind. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have computers, but I think that that fixation is a little troubling.</p> <p><strong>It’s sometimes said of your work that you have a preoccupation with the subject of time.</strong></p> <figure id="attachment_11061" style="width: 280px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="size-medium wp-image-11061 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer-280x380.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-medium wp-image-11061 lazyload" alt="W.S. Merwin, poet, translator and environmental activist. (Photo by Mark Hanauer)" width="280" height="380" data-sizes="(max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer-280x380.jpg 280w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer-560x760.jpg 560w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer-280x380.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">W.S. Merwin, poet, translator and environmental activist. (Photo by Mark Hanauer)</figcaption></figure><p>W.S. Merwin: Doesn’t everybody? I was talking to the physicist Lisa Randall last night, we were sitting next to each other at dinner — what a wonderful woman — and we were talking about these dimensions, this dimension of gravity, which I’m fascinated by, everything that she has to say about it. She was talking about space and time, just in passing, and I wanted to continue the conversation because I want to hear what she has to say about time.</p> <p>I think time is a fiction. It’s a human fiction. There’s a reality, and we don’t know what the reality is. I mean, the watch and the time that we’re going by is a fiction that we’ve agreed to, but we don’t know that it’s true, and what its relation is to time in the universe. And of course time to us — throw away the watches and throw away the chronology of all kinds — but time is really experience. I mean, when we’re in love and wanting to see the person we’re in love with, time goes very, very slowly, and the moment we’re with them, it goes like lightning. The trouble about being happy is that everything goes so fast. Being in jail, it must creep along incredibly slowly. I don’t know that this is true to the same degree for animals that it is for us. A great deal of that fiction must be a human fiction, I think. I don’t know why I think that, but I don’t think my dog feels time the same way that we do. I don’t know. She can’t tell me.</p> <p><strong>She doesn’t look at her watch?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: No, she doesn’t do that. She probably would if I gave her a watch.</p> <p><strong>In thumbing through anthologies, it’s undeniable that death has always been a popular topic for poets, from John Donne to Emily Dickinson. I guess it’s the final mystery. One of your own best-known poems is “For the Anniversary of My Death.”</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Sometimes when people write about it, they say, “Oh, that’s terribly morose,” or very dark and all of that. I think they’re kidding themselves. Death is part of every moment of our lives. It’s always there with us. It doesn’t mean that we have to be gloomy about it, but it’s always there. I mean, yesterday is gone, isn’t it? What we have and what we’re blessed with is this very moment, with the whole of our past in it and the whole of the unknown future in it, but it’s all here. And it’s going as fast, faster than we can talk about it, although both of those are true at the same time. Are you going to sit and be gloomy about it? Some people are terrified of dying. I’m very lucky. My mother was never in the least frightened by the thought of death. It was there in front of her all of the time because she was an orphan. She lost both parents by the time she was six. Her grandmother took care of her until her grandmother died when she was 12. Then her brother quit his education to take a job so that he could support both of them and he died before he was 30. And when she married, she lost her first child 15 minutes after it was born and nobody knows why. I think the hospital made some mistake. So, her whole youth was one death after another. It’s as though she had always known about it. It was always right there, and she wasn’t afraid of it at all. I worried about my father on that subject, but his last words were, “I’m not afraid.” He died. I think that’s a great gift from parents. I don’t know. It would be very rash to say how one feels about it. I certainly don’t think of it with constant seizures of panic or anything of the kind. It seems to me the bus comes along and you get on, you know.</p> <p><strong>Would you be kind enough to read some of those poems for us?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Sure. What would you like to hear?</p> <p><strong>We have “For the Anniversary of My Death.”</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: “For the Anniversary of My Death” was written almost 40 years ago, I think.</p> <p>“For the Anniversary of My Death”</p> <p>Every year without knowing it I have passed the day<br> When the last fires will wave to me<br> And the silence will set out<br> Tireless traveler<br> Like the beam of a lightless star</p> <p>Then I will no longer<br> Find myself in life as in a strange garment<br> Surprised at the earth<br> And the love of one woman<br> And the shamelessness of men<br> As today writing after three days of rain<br> Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease<br> And bowing not knowing to what.</p> <p><strong>Perhaps you would you read this one: “Just Now.”</strong></p> <p>“Just Now”</p> <p>In the morning as the storm begins to blow away<br> the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me<br> that there has been something simpler than I could ever believe<br> simpler than I have begun to find words for<br> not patient not even waiting no more hidden<br> than the air itself that became part of me for a while<br> with every breath that remained with me unnoticed<br> something that was here unnamed unknown in the days<br> and the nights not separate from them<br> not separate from them as they came and were gone<br> it must have been here neither early nor late then<br> by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks</p> <p><strong>In one of your poems, you begin, “From the kindness of my parents, I suppose it was, that I held that belief about suffering, good people.” It sounds like you had kind parents.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Yes, yes. That wasn’t all they were, but they certainly were kind. Yes. My mother more so than my father. My father was frightened, and less kind than my mother. But yes, it’s perfectly true and they both had a sense of decency about how you behave towards people. You didn’t do nasty and cruel things. You just didn’t do that.</p> <p><strong>Would you read that poem for us?</strong></p> <p>“Good People”</p> <p>From the kindness of my parents<br> I suppose it was that I held<br> that belief about suffering</p> <p>imagining that if only<br> it could come to the attention<br> of any person with normal<br> feelings certainly anyone<br> literate who might have gone</p> <p>to college they would comprehend<br> pain when it went on before them<br> and would do something about it<br> whenever they saw it happen<br> in the time of pain the present<br> they would try to stop the bleeding<br> for example with their own hands</p> <p>but it escapes their attention<br> or there may be reasons for it<br> the victims under the blankets<br> the meat counters the maimed children<br> the animals the animals<br> staring from the end of the world</p> <p><strong>Perhaps you’d be kind enough to read another for us, “Yesterday.”</strong></p> <p>“Yesterday”</p> <p>My friend says I was not a good son<br> you understand<br> I say yes I understand</p> <p>he says I did not go<br> to see my parents very often you know<br> and I say yes I know</p> <p>even when I was living in the same city he says<br> maybe I would go there once<br> a month or maybe even less<br> I say oh yes</p> <p>he says the last time I went to see my father<br> I say the last time I saw my father</p> <p>he says the last time I saw my father<br> he was asking me about my life<br> how I was making out and he<br> went into the next room<br> to get something to give me</p> <p>oh I say<br> feeling again the cold<br> of my father’s hand the last time</p> <p>he says that my father turned<br> in the doorway and saw me<br> look at my wristwatch and he<br> said you know I would like you to stay<br> and talk with me</p> <p>oh yes I say</p> <p>but if you are busy he said<br> I don’t want you to feel that you<br> have to<br> just because I’m here</p> <p>I say nothing</p> <p>he says my father<br> said maybe<br> you have important work that you were doing<br> or maybe you should be seeing<br> somebody I don’t want to keep you</p> <p>I look out the window<br> my friend is older than I am<br> he says and I told my father it was so<br> and I got up and left him then<br> you know</p> <p>though there was nowhere I had to go<br> and nothing I had to do</p> <p><strong>Thank you so much. What does writing poetry do for you?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: I have to do it. It’s central to my life. García Lorca said to a young poet that if you can live without writing poetry, don’t do it, nobody needs it. But I can’t live without it, I’ve always wanted to do it. It makes sense of things.</p> <figure id="attachment_11077" style="width: 2472px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-11077 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-017-merwin-2008konasummit0335.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-11077 size-full lazyload" alt="W.S. Merwin addresses the student delegates at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii." width="2472" height="1958" data-sizes="(max-width: 2472px) 100vw, 2472px" data-srcset="/web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-017-merwin-2008konasummit0335.jpg 2472w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-017-merwin-2008konasummit0335-380x301.jpg 380w, /web/20170621212848im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-017-merwin-2008konasummit0335-760x602.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170621212848/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-017-merwin-2008konasummit0335.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">W.S. Merwin addresses the student delegates at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>What advice would you give to a young person wanting to write poetry?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: It’s all about attention and listening. Pay attention and listen. Listen to everything, listen to absolutely everything. Listen to the sounds you don’t want to hear, listen to the ones you do want to hear, listen to the people talking around you. I heard this wonderful thing this morning about taking the bus. Every so often, I was saying to Paula, the last time as we went through New York, I used to love riding on the subway, because I don’t have to have something to read, I just am sort of fascinated by everybody around me, what they’re saying and what they’re doing. It’s paying attention, but it’s listening, listening. And all of a sudden you hear something, and it may be a phrase that you’ve heard over and over again, but suddenly it’s got electricity in it, you know. And those are the notes you take out. What is that little charge in there and where does it want to go? You may not even know what it’s about, but it’s all about, if you tried to write something new all of the time — as I have — all your life, it seems to change. If you’re telling the truth in the essential place where you don’t know, it really is all you that is coming out and nobody else could write it, and that’s what you want. That’s what you want to make students see, listen. Chuang Tzu — who was a great Taoist, as much as almost 3,000 years ago — said, “When I say that someone is good at hearing, I do not mean that they are good at hearing anything else. I mean that they are good at hearing themselves.” That’s what the attention is about. And however smart you are, if you get distracted from that you’re going to end up in an unhappy place, I think.</p> <p><strong>You’ve spoken to students about embracing their ignorance.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Ignorance is going to be with them, however smart they get and however much they know. Our knowledge, the whole of human knowledge — look at the night sky — how big is our knowledge? We’re tiny, you know. It’s dust. It’s tiny. The unknown that surrounds it, where it all came from, it’s the great mystery, we don’t know where it came from. How come we’re here? It’s every bit as interesting as where we’re going. How come we’re here at all? Isn’t that amazing, really? Out of the whole of the universe, out of the whole of what we think of as time, here we are.</p> <p><strong>What did it mean to you to win the Pulitzer Prize for <em>The Carrier of Ladders</em>?</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: It’s very nice to win prizes. I don’t think you should spend your life hungering and thirsting for them, but if they come your way, that’s fine. I remember John Berryman, somebody said — there was some question of him winning some big prize — and there was a journalist interviewing him and he said, “Well, if you win that prize, it will be wonderful, won’t it?” And John said, “Yeah, it will be wonderful. It won’t be <em>very</em> wonderful, but it will be wonderful.” I thought that’s pretty good. There’s a line of the Psalms that says, “If riches come, set not your heart upon them.” You accept them and you say thank you, whatever it is, and it’s very nice, but don’t pin your life on these expectations. I’ve always felt that. If it comes by, that’s nice.</p> <p><strong>Thank you so much. It was a great experience talking to you.</strong></p> <p>W.S. Merwin: Thank you.</p></body></html> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">W. S. Merwin Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>19 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3126079447323" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-Merwin-seated-credit-merwin-conservancy-dot-org-Photo-by-Tom-Sewell-2009.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin (Credit: Merwin Conservancy)" data-image-copyright="mer0-018-merwin-Merwin-seated-credit-merwin-conservancy-dot-org-Photo by Tom Sewell, 2009" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-Merwin-seated-credit-merwin-conservancy-dot-org-Photo-by-Tom-Sewell-2009-290x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-Merwin-seated-credit-merwin-conservancy-dot-org-Photo-by-Tom-Sewell-2009-579x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.56184210526316" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-A-young-W.S.-Merwin.-Credit-Estate-of-W.S.-Merwin.jpg" data-image-caption="A young W.S. Merwin. (Credit: Estate of W.S. Merwin)" data-image-copyright="W.S. Merwin: To Plant a Tree" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-A-young-W.S.-Merwin.-Credit-Estate-of-W.S.-Merwin-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-018-merwin-A-young-W.S.-Merwin.-Credit-Estate-of-W.S.-Merwin-760x427.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.79210526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-017-merwin-2008konasummit0335.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin addresses the student delegates at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii. (漏 Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="mer0-017-merwin-2008konasummit0335" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-017-merwin-2008konasummit0335-380x301.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-017-merwin-2008konasummit0335-760x602.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-016-merwin-2008konasummit0333.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin addresses the student delegates at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii. (漏 Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="mer0-016-merwin-2008konasummit0333" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-016-merwin-2008konasummit0333-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-016-merwin-2008konasummit0333-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-015-merwin-2008konasummit0330.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin addresses the student delegates at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii. (漏 Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="mer0-015-merwin-2008konasummit0330" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-015-merwin-2008konasummit0330-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-015-merwin-2008konasummit0330-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66184210526316" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-014-merwin-Merwin-with-Obama.jpg" data-image-caption="U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin and President Barack Obama share a lighthearted moment in the Oval Office, October 25, 2010. (Courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. W.S. Merwin)" data-image-copyright="mer0-014-merwin-Merwin-with-Obama" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-014-merwin-Merwin-with-Obama-380x251.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-014-merwin-Merwin-with-Obama-760x503.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-013-merwin-2008konasummit1586.jpg" data-image-caption="Poet W.S. Merwin and memoirist Frank McCourt at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii. (漏 Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="mer0-013-merwin-2008konasummit1586" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-013-merwin-2008konasummit1586-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-013-merwin-2008konasummit1586-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4757281553398" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-012-merwin-Merwin-WS_Corbis_AAHN001401.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin, at home in his garden in the 1970s. (漏 Christopher Felver/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Poet W.S. Merwin Seated Outdoors" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-012-merwin-Merwin-WS_Corbis_AAHN001401-257x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-012-merwin-Merwin-WS_Corbis_AAHN001401-515x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.394495412844" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658.jpg" data-image-caption="The poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973) was one of the first to recognize W.S. Merwin's talent. He published Merwin's first book and supplied an enthusiastic introduction. The two men quarreled in print over Merwin's opposition to the Vietnam War. (Mark Gerson. 漏 Bettmann/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Poet and Writer W.H. Auden" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658-273x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-011-merwin-Auden-W.H.-poet-and-writer_Corbis_W658-545x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4872798434442" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-010-merwin-Merwin-W.S._Getty_7937499.jpg" data-image-caption="Poet and activist W.S. Merwin in the 1960s. (Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Portrait Of W.S. Merwin" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-010-merwin-Merwin-W.S._Getty_7937499-256x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-010-merwin-Merwin-W.S._Getty_7937499-511x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3333333333333" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-008-merwin-2008konasummit1375EzraPound_AP451226012.jpg" data-image-caption="The American poet and translator Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in 1945. He was confined to a hospital for the criminally insane after making propaganda broadcasts for Fascist Italy during World War II. An early supporter of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, he also encouraged the young W.S. Merwin. (AP Images)" data-image-copyright="EZRA POUND" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-008-merwin-2008konasummit1375EzraPound_AP451226012-285x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-008-merwin-2008konasummit1375EzraPound_AP451226012-570x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2541254125413" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-007-merwin-2008konasummit1375tselliot_AP5601190399.jpg" data-image-caption="T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) in his London office, 1956. The American-born Eliot was the most influential poet and critic of his era, and a generous supporter of the young W.S. Merwin. (AP Images)" data-image-copyright="Watchf Associated Press International News United Kingdom England APHS52450 T.S. ELIOT" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-007-merwin-2008konasummit1375tselliot_AP5601190399-303x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-007-merwin-2008konasummit1375tselliot_AP5601190399-606x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.75657894736842" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-006-merwin-2008konasummit1375.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin receives the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement from author Frank McCourt at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii. (漏 Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="mer0-006-merwin-2008konasummit1375" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-006-merwin-2008konasummit1375-380x288.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-006-merwin-2008konasummit1375-760x575.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-005-merwin-2008konasummit1373.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin receives the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement from author Frank McCourt at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii. (漏 Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="mer0-005-merwin-2008konasummit1373" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-005-merwin-2008konasummit1373-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-005-merwin-2008konasummit1373-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68947368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-004-merwin-2008konasummit0868.jpg" data-image-caption="Ellen McCourt, W.S. Merwin and his wife, Paula, enjoy the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii. (漏 Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="mer0-004-merwin-2008konasummit0868" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-004-merwin-2008konasummit0868-380x262.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-004-merwin-2008konasummit0868-760x524.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-003-merwin-0985.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin chats with author Michael Ondaatje at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Hawaii. (漏 Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="mer0-003-merwin-0985" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-003-merwin-0985-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-003-merwin-0985-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5049504950495" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin in Washington, D.C. in 1994. He came to Washington to receive the first annual $100,000 Tanning Prize from the Academy of American Poets. (AP Images/stf)" data-image-copyright="Merwin" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-002-merwin-Merwin-WS_AP_AP9409290104-505x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3571428571429" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer.jpg" data-image-caption="W.S. Merwin, poet, translator and environmental activist. (Photo by Mark Hanauer)" data-image-copyright="mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin hi res (credit Mark Hanauer)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer-280x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-001-merwin-2008konasummit1375Merwin-hi-res-credit-Mark-Hanauer-560x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.69473684210526" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-009-merwin-2008konasummit1375RobertGraves-1.jpg" data-image-caption="The British poet, novelist and classical scholar Robert Graves (1895-1985), on a rare visit to London in 1972. W.S. Merwin tutored Graves's son on the island of Majorca in the 1950s. (AP Images)" data-image-copyright="Graves, Robert (poet) Rare Visit" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-009-merwin-2008konasummit1375RobertGraves-1-380x264.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/06/mer0-009-merwin-2008konasummit1375RobertGraves-1-760x528.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" 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Bush</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/susan-butcher/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Susan Butcher</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-cameron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Cameron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-s-carson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin S. Carson, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Carter</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-cash/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Cash</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-s-collins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/denton-a-cooley/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Denton A. Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Gl眉ck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Hel煤</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170621212848/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. 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