What is humility? Humility is to order Merwin's small collected work while realizing he is already my teacher, that in that last question I had costed, not really explored everything except William Carlos Williams' work, realizing women make their work substantial. I had understood Hilda Doolittle's work was the place to start compare Hilda Doolittle's work with William Carlos Williams's work, realizing that William's work is substantial, reviewing Roethke's work in his life because like me he had learned to give himself to poetry never "got sober," he fell into his own swimming pool while drunk in front his lady friend had drowned while had he earned the Pulitzer after writing The North American Sequence, wasted, I had drowned, the right thing for me "getting sober at age 35 years 10 months and 17 days, and 10 hours the exact moment I'd entered our front seat of our car ito do the right thing, having done all the right things except I realized the inequality of this school, a glorified high school exploiting new teachers work against the law when I was doing the right thing by executing my responsibilities, and later realizing I would have been doing the right thing with study and effort in World Literature, and realizing Hotchkiss never had done the right things, he had womanized and might have had a problem with alcohol and that he had cheated and was found out and though I never drank, had forgotten too much of the best of my teaching, was too old to teach with enthusiasm, so I gave up teaching slowly devoted and realized I did not want to be a Christian Lay person, that I had fudged it and done my lay membership without thourlay studying the last six precepts realizing the first ten were wha I had to work on with honesty and anger, and realizing anger was because I had not been honest, so it was time to go back and study what I needed to be an adequate lay member, those six precepts, and watching Meian to learn the best way to present the lay membership was first to memorize all of the introductions utilizing all the helps I needed to be a good Lay member. That was the first thing in order to admit that Jishin had something there, and Introduction to Creative Writing was the first order of business, as I went to Jundo, and I worked best by announcing my best intensions to Jundo then execute my intentions with honesty that I could study both at the same time, because I had fulfilled requirements in both well before realizing I was an excellent student well before I received my BA, and the registrar had realized I could have graduated with honors and accepted the most difficult with knowledge I knew the math required to have made up that F so fudged and gave me my BA knowing what an outstanding student, realizing that IVCC was a dishonest institution as Kroaque had cheated on hi nephew by pressuring my into giving a passing grade, tha everywhere I had been the teacher well beyond what they deserved, what I wanted was to write in the first place, so study to be a priest while a little mke up was in order, that I might never complete priesthood before I died, because I know my heart is weak and doing everything I can to optimize life, an I might complete the priesthood never taking ordination because that is Marjorie's wish so being satisfied with Ubasoku while being the best Ubasoku I can be knowing all the background as others might already know, so admiring Meian because she is an accomplished woman and following in Shoenan's steps is what I really what I want to do and asking to begin attending Birdsong to really learn, and maybe only doing Loving Kindness because it is the right thing to do making me a better Ubasoku. That is the gosal being who I really am so I can fulfill my destiny to be the best while never being recognized, and beginning to show up at Zazenkai when I can because it is the right thing to do and that it might actually be easier than doing Birdsong, and that at the same time it will be harder because it is treeleaf and yeet I already know part of what it takes to be a good priest, that even Kokuu doesn't know the literature you do, but no comparing to others, that is the end goal doing what is right because it is the right thing to do knowing I might never complete my destiny to be a good priest, so being a good Ubasoku. That is enough. I am certain this this to a close with proper transition to do right things simply because are the right things to do. Thank you Jundo for giving me a destiny of being honest and mild in manners.
Gassho
sat/lah
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The reason I posted the Wikipedia article (free encyclopedia) was that Merwin is sometimes overlooked by Buddhists as one of the greatest Buddhist poets in English of the last 100 years, and I love his work. I don't see people here on Treeleaf Zendo exploring his work.
sat/lah
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
W. S. Merwin
Merwin in 2003
Merwin in 2003
Born William Stanley Merwin
September 30, 1927
New York City, U.S.
Died March 15, 2019 (aged 91)
Haiku, Hawaii, U.S.
Occupation Poet
Education Wyoming Seminary, Kingston, PA 1944; Princeton University (attended)
Period 1952–2019
Genre Poetry, prose, translation
Notable awards PEN Translation Prize
1969
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1971, 2009
Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry
1990
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
1994
Tanning Prize
1994
National Book Award
2005
United States Poet Laureate
2010
Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award
2013
Spouse Dorothy Jeanne Ferry
Dido Milroy
Paula Dunaway (1983–2017)
Signature
WSMerwin.svg
William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation.[1] During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island's rainforests.
Merwin received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 and 2009;[2] the National Book Award for Poetry in 2005,[3] and the Tanning Prize—one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets—as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2010, the Library of Congress named him the 17th United States Poet Laureate.[4][5]
Early life
Merwin grew up on this street in Union City, New Jersey, which was renamed for him in 2006.
W. S. Merwin was born in New York City on September 30, 1927. He grew up on the corner of Fourth Street and New York Avenue in Union City, New Jersey, and lived there until 1936, when his family moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania. As a child, Merwin was enamored of the natural world, sometimes finding himself talking to the large tree in his back yard. He was also fascinated with things that he saw as links to the past, such as the building behind his home that had once been a barn which housed a horse and carriage.[6] At the age of five he started writing hymns for his father,[7] a Presbyterian minister.[5]
Career
Early career: 1952–1976
After attending Princeton University in 1952, Merwin married Dorothy Jeanne Ferry, and moved to Spain. During his stay there, while visiting the renowned poet Robert Graves at his homestead on the island of Majorca, he served as tutor to Graves's son. There, he met Dido Milroy, fifteen years his senior, with whom he collaborated on a play and whom he later married and lived with in London. In 1956, Merwin moved to Boston for a fellowship at the Poets' Theater. He returned to London, where he befriended Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. In 1968, Merwin moved to New York City, separating from his wife Dido Milroy, who stayed at their home in France. In the late 1970s, Merwin moved to Hawaii and eventually was divorced from Dido Milroy. He married Paula Dunaway in 1983.[8]
From 1956 to 1957, Merwin was also playwright-in-residence at the Poet's Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts; he became poetry editor at The Nation in 1962. Besides being a prolific poet, he was a respected translator of Spanish, French, Latin and Italian literature and poetry (including Lazarillo de Tormes and Dante's Purgatorio)[9][10] as well as poetry from Sanskrit, Yiddish, Middle English, Japanese and Quechua. He served as selector of poems of the American poet Craig Arnold (1967–2009).[11]
Merwin is known for his poetry about the Vietnam War, and can be included among the canon of Vietnam War-era poets which includes writers Robert Bly, Robert Duncan, Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg and Yusef Komunyakaa.[12]
Merwin's early subjects were frequently tied to mythological or legendary themes, while many of his poems featured animals. A volume called The Drunk in the Furnace (1960) marked a change for Merwin, in that he began to write in a more autobiographical way.[13]
In the 1960s, Merwin lived in a small apartment in New York City's Greenwich Village.[6]
Later career: 1977–2019
Merwin's volume Migration: New and Selected Poems won the 2005 National Book Award for poetry.[14]
In 1998, Merwin wrote Folding Cliffs: A Narrative, an ambitious novel-in-verse about Hawaiʻi in history and legend.[15]
The Shadow of Sirius, published in 2008 by Copper Canyon Press, was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.[2]
In June 2010, the Library of Congress named Merwin the seventeenth United States Poet Laureate, to replace the outgoing Kay Ryan.[4][5] He is the subject of the 2014 documentary film Even Though the Whole World Is Burning. Merwin appeared in the PBS documentary The Buddha, released in 2010. He had moved to Hawaii to study with the Zen Buddhist master Robert Aitken in 1976.[16]
In 2010, with his wife Paula, he co-founded The Merwin Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving his hand-built, off-the-grid poet's home and 18-acre restored property in Haiku, Maui, which has been transformed from an "agricultural wasteland" to a "Noah's Ark" for rare palm trees, one of the largest and most biodiverse collections of palms in the world.[17]
Merwin's last book of poetry, Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), was composed during the difficult process of losing his eyesight. When he could no longer see well enough to write, he dictated poems to his wife, Paula. It is a book about aging and the practice of living one's life in the present. Writing about Garden Time in The New York Times, Jeff Gordinier suggests that "Merwin's work feels like part of some timeless continuum, a river that stretches all the way back to Han Shan and Li Po."[18]
In 2017, Copper Canyon Press published The Essential W. S. Merwin, a book which traces the seven decade legacy of Merwin's poetry, with selections ranging from his 1952 debut, A Mask for Janus, to 2016's Garden Time, as well as a selection of translations and lesser known prose narratives. Merwin's literary papers are held at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The collection consists of some 5,500 archival items, and 450 printed books.[19][20]
Death
Merwin lived on land that was part of a pineapple plantation, on the northeast coast of Maui, Hawaii.[4][5]
W.S Merwin died on March 15, 2019, in his sleep at his home, as reported by his publisher Copper Canyon Press.[21]
Awards
1952: Yale Younger Poets Prize for A Mask for Janus[22]
1954: Kenyon Review Fellowship in Poetry[23]
1956: Rockefeller Fellowship[23]
1957: National Institute of Arts and Letters grant[23]
1957: Playwrighting Bursary, Arts Council of Great Britain[23]
1961: Rabinowitz Foundation Grant[23]
1962: Bess Hokin Prize, Poetry magazine[23]
1964/1965: Ford Foundation Grant[23]
1966: Chapelbrook Foundation Fellowship[23]
1967: Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, Poetry magazine[23]
1969: PEN Translation Prize for Selected Translations 1948–1968[24]
1969: Rockefeller Foundation Grant[23]
1971: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Carrier of Ladders (published in 1971)[24]
1973: Academy of American Poets Fellowship[23]
1974: Shelley Memorial Award[23]
1979: Bollingen Prize for Poetry, Yale University Library[23]
1987: Governor's Award for Literature of the state of Hawaii[24]
1990: Maurice English Poetry Award[25]
1993: The Tanning Prize for mastery in the art of poetry[24]
1993: Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Travels[24]
1994: Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award[24]
1999: Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, a jointly-held position with Rita Dove and Louise Glück[26]
2005: National Book Award for Poetry for Migration: New and Selected Poems[14][22]
2004: Golden Wreath Award of the Struga Poetry Evenings Festival in Macedonia[26]
2004: Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award[26]
2008: Golden Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement[27]
2009: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Shadow of Sirius (published in 2008)[28]
2010: Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement[29]
2010: United States Poet Laureate[4]
2013: Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award[30]
Other accolades
Merwin's home town honored him in 2006 by renaming a local street near his childhood home W. S. Merwin Way.[6]
Bibliography
Main article: W. S. Merwin bibliographyLeave a comment:
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Meian, dear member of our Zendo, I heard your cooing bird of Peace, the cool breeze through our White Pine in our front yard
Gassho
TSLeave a comment:
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Water splashes
from the sunlit sky
A dove mourns
In the cool breeze.
[emoji120] stlh
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Everyone, what I meant to say is you are welcome! Even if you have never written a single line of poetry, try it here. We encourage you! We want to see what you think of the world in poetry, or introspective, look inward, or out, or anywhere. Buddhist or not, just try a little here. Give yourself a voice; write a poem or two.
Gassho
sat/lahLeave a comment:
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All, all are Welcomed
Please write your poems here
All are welcomed all near, all fair
All solid or think not critics roam
To fear your words, bring tears
Vision comes every year, new
Old reluctant, afraid be solid
Be here, laugh your songs
Of Buddhahood, songs of day,
Dear to hearts of night, of artisans
Not dear, not long of those
Forgotten days, now dear
Bring your tears, your laughter
Light your way, light your path.
All rathe incurred, none so dear,
Remembrance not rath, forgotten
Now brought to mind, brought
From time, art is easy, art more,
More than Freud or Jung
Or Adler, or Skinner or CBT
Gestalts or EBT, bring song
Your majesty, your Loving
Kindness your most Fire Sermons
Giving more than can't, less hurt.
My mother, Miss Emily gave
Single volume, verses heart
Felt, simple I am nobody
Who are you? We are
Someone to bring mirth
Bringer of light simple verses
Iambics, Trochees, more rhythm
More than rhyme, all of depth
Or light, all are welcomed here.
Aphrodite, Sapho, Silf, soft
Women, hard of birth, women, men
Whatever you bring to your own
Muses, gone Greek to Chinese
Women. Men of Kohens, women
Teach us to be strong, or light
Of mindfulness, misused not
Overburdened life, bringer of rain
Bringer of more songs, sing
Reluctant, do ever sitar Proxima
Six Senses star Centuri, closest
Sun, then far 5.7 magnitude,
Your days of operations, therapies,
Any religion, enlightenment
Nothing to do with your gods,
Gods reluctantly, leave judgement
Every home, ever jobs or none
Like me to teach children
Women or men your pain
Your joy, your singleness, purposes
Simply beginner mind, always
Roaming to mountains, streams
Oceans, boat accrues no shoal
Crossing over together shore
You are homeward come at last.
Gassho
sat\lahLeave a comment:
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At Rest
Sold in planks, $54.93 cases
Of Engineered Oak, old carpet
Torn away, cat destroyed
Remodeled, removed savings
To cut Elm, River Birch,
He is seventy-two, 2023.
Three maples in front yard,
Never cut trees, weeds
Remember new clay
Afte daughter five at school
Moved from Sioux Falls,
To Turtle Creek, he's older,
Dreaming of his fatherhood,
Daughter born in Colorado
Second Valedictorian at West Central,
Then Japan; they seldom see
Books denied. His Ubasoku
Editions gone to seed,
To Goodwill, this is his still,
Ending life full of Zazen
Her childhood. Boxed
In gifts time itself stands,
To Pale Beige, morning still,
Misty ground covered
Wished another year
Home never cut away
Small 1006 sq ft space
They lived upon cut ground,
Oak floor, Wood
Maples carved. Cat gone,
Mother sits alone,
At peace, quiet, lovingly.
Gassho
sat/lah
Tai ShiLeave a comment:
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May first Classic Haiku bought
Books from wisdom stood their time
Less Rhyme, ditto, then remarked.
Gassho
sat/lah
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Love Making
Daughter wrapped in bright red wool,
For father's work in brilliant blue.
Man Praises wheels of earthenware,
Pearls for their child's blond curly hair,
Because her womanhood is season
Aggrieved in books for eighty dollars
A piece. Voices break in ancient air?
Percentages in offering his poetry,
Nothing less for couplets in his eyes,
Laced with heavy Buddhist chimes,
Silver window Christian now his grief.
Letters of snow, single lines twinkle,
Rhymes for bread, making blood another
Care for mother's way, relentless work,
Their daily marriage never gone astray.
Gassho
sat/lah
Tai ShiLeave a comment:
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Each moment a gift
A blank sheet to choose colors
Paint your life with love
Sat/lah
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Precepts Right Themselves
This night, black spaces deeply spread
Before dawn. I rise to 31 F degrees,
Is this dangerous? Even first of spring, heavy
Frost tonight. It is below 32 F degrees,
Now 30 F. Correct snow, not heavy freeze;
Now teaches me to stay warm into night,
"Not 32F in weather." Said my wife,
No one can sleep in North America.
I recline in my chair at no expense,
Now I sing praises full octaves,
No sleep tonight, so began some stars
Altered in this net of sky, not even stairs
Of Milky Galaxy correct my mind;
My tea at 5 am. I've come to blackness
Of true dharma; stars quiet, I find some truth
In white frost planted growth of death!
Giving me this partial time; rockets
Exploding up; so war can begin another
Way to rain in Texas; long orf, wild weed,
Instead finding solace in inky space.
Unhappy birds have disappeared. No
Habitat. My Buddha is not gone from heat.
Zazen at 8am; assembled, we now grow
In Zendos some slow delight. I have opened
Chapter One; I chant, I sing; I fold my hands, I bow
Chant, Sit for 30 minutes! Inky sight passed
Away, become day; released into my way,
My cure of infectious mind now yellow bright.
Again I've read Cervantes tilting at his mills,
My Roshi is Sancho in this Sad remitting way
The same is not Japanese; instructions being
To cure; I trust in honestly spring not frost.
Did save my sight, my meditative life!
How many times must I find truth?
Ancient pilgrims of Fire Sermon stopped.
These Precepts announce another golden way.
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It's Tired but New
I grow old grows like our pine tree
At northwest corner of our home
In June 1975, slowly out of youth,
Explained the young gardner,
"That white pine probably won't grow,
Not meant for South Dakota."
Mom dug a hole in our yard, three feet
Into topsoil, through rock cutting
Prices, Contractor spread clay. They placed
Roots firmly into topsoil at the corner of our
New home. The beatific sapling living.
In purchased dirt, I paid no attention,
"Why didn't the split for a good gift
On Fathers' Day?" Never gave
Thought about trees while gaining age.
Twenty-five years later,
Branches upwards, near Sioux Falls
Thirty-six feet tall in 2010,
Why should I think in June
Such enlightened thoughts, the future
Books about Rocky Mountain National Park?
14000 foot peaks, realizing, shale in heat
Eighty degrees, never thinking change
to seventy-one. Boulders
Solid molten rock, into our climb
One Hundred feet more, lungs ached
At 8500 feet. Air so thin, dry oxygen
With enough silver in those rocks
Days of grate poetry, west Conestoga's
Another pass, not pebbles on mountains.
As we approached clear, glacier stream
Stood alone wild innocent faun, away
From thicket, dense brush, chattering
Birds, We climbed up rock to 9000 feet
Scintillating boughs evergreens;
If we touched baby deer,
Doe peering from evergreens trees
Watching as always sun rays crept slightly
Through high conifer boughs,
Mother could bite flesh, then deep
From our wounds, baby rejected.
I drank from snow melt stream
Never fearing Giardia from animals
Near glacier fed water in June.
Our White pine thrives in drought.
After my cataract surgery
The tree shakes in our picture window
With breeze great pane of glass,
Grass bejeweled with dew.
Boughs shimmer like rain.
For the first time in twenty-six years,
I saw why they gave me
That Father's Day gift, when
She knew that three foot sapling
Would grow older with me.
Mom conceived of time, my cataracts gone,
In kindergarten our daughter of play
Our bright future at 71 and 68 I realized
The tree. Our Daughter now
Thirty-four reads Snow Country in Japanese.
Gassho
sat/lah
Tai ShiLeave a comment:
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'Bird Song'
A bird flies
...a cardinal's love song
Blooming trees.
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