The Quarantine Tapes: Quotation Shorts - W.S. Merwin
Today’s Quotation is care of W. S. Merwin.
Listen in!
Subscribe to the Quarantine Tapes at quarantinetapes.com or search for the Quarantine Tapes on your favorite podcast app!
Appointed United States Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress in 2010, William Stanley Merwin had a career that spanned seven decades. A poet, translator, gardener and environmental activist, Merwin has become one of the most widely read and honored poets in America. He died at home at the age of 91, in the house he built, among the thousands of palms he planted, on Friday, March 15, 2019.
Born September 30, 1927, in New York City, William Stanley Merwin was the son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five. He was raised in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and attended Princeton University on a scholarship. As a young man, Merwin went to Europe and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator. Over the years, his poetic voice moved from the more formal to a more distinctly American voice. As the Atlantic Monthly said, “The intentions of Merwin’s poetry are as broad as the biosphere yet as intimate as a whisper. He conveys in the sweet simplicity of grounded language a sense of the self where it belongs, floating between heaven, earth, and the underground.”
He has lived in Majorca, London, France, Mexico and several places in the United States, as well as Boston and New York. In 1976, Merwin moved to Hawaii to study with Robert Aitken, a Zen Buddhist teacher. He married Paula Dunaway, in 1983, and settled on Maui. For over 40 years, they lived in a home that William designed and helped build, surrounded by acres of land once devastated and depleted from years of erosion, logging and toxic agricultural practices. Together, the Merwins painstakingly restored the land into one of the most comprehensive palm gardens in the world. He continued to live, write and garden in Hawaii until he died at home on Friday, March 15th, 2019.
From https://merwinconservancy.org/about-w-s-merwin/
For more information about W. S. Merwin:
Previously on The Quarantine Tapes:
Wayne Koestenbaum on Merwin, at 09:42: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-166-wayne-koestenbaum
Joy Harjo on Merwin, at 02:52: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-153-joy-harjo
Edward Hirsch on Merwin, at 19:54: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-173-edward-hirsch
Naomi Shihab Nye on Merwin, at 24:16: https://quarantine-tapes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-073-naomi-shihab-nye
“Letters from W. S. Merwin”: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/03/25/letters-from-w-s-merwin/
“W. S. Merwin: At Home in the Garden of the Unknown”: https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/arts-culture/2019-04-30/w-s-merwin-at-home-in-the-garden-of-the-unknown
“W. S. Merwin on Hope and What to Do On the Last Day of the World”:
Πηγή: https://quarantinetapes.com/episodes/the-quarantine-tapes-quotation-shorts-ws-merwin-WKIkNBeP