W.S. Merwin

This background information for W.S. Merwin appeared in the 'Atlantic Monthly" in an article by Peter Davidson August 28, 1997

"Merwin's work has followed his life. Born seventy years ago in Union City, New Jersey, he was raised first in a Presbyterian rectory looking across the Hudson toward the towers of New York and then later in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1947 from Princeton University, where he learned from John Berryman, and set out for Europe to encounter the Romance languages. During the early 1950s he lived as a translator of Latin, French, Spanish, and Portuguese on Majorca (where he tutored the children of the poet Robert Graves) and in Spain, Portugal, and England. He eventually settled in the south of France and headquartered there during most of the 1960s, though after a time he spent parts of nearly every year in New York. Later he wandered into Mexico for several years. Since 1975 he has resided in Hawaii, where he maintains a miniature forest of trees and plants of species that are threatened elsewhere in the world. "

Beggars and Kings

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