Poetry Day: W. S. Merwin

In a career spanning five decades, poet, translator, and environmental activist W. S. Merwin has become one of the most honored and widely read poets in America. From his first collection, A Mask for Janus, which W. H. Auden chose for the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1952, to The Shadow of Sirius, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, Merwin has written with sheer grace and limpid power about the natural world, time and memory. His earliest poems are informed by his deep knowledge of classical and medieval literature, while his later work shows the influence of his profound pacifism and far-reaching conservationism. Through his formal innovations, and his abandonment of punctuation, he has developed a signature voice, unlike that of any other poet in English. Appointed U.S. Poet Laureate in 2010, Merwin lives, writes, and gardens in Hawaii, on the island of Maui. He has spent the last 30 years planting 19 acres with over 800 endangered species of palm, creating a sustainable forest. The property has recently been protected as the Merwin Conservancy.

Co-sponsored with the Chicago Public Library