A W.S. Merwin timeline

A W.S. Merwin timeline

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1927: William Stanley Merwin is born in New York City. He spends his childhood in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Merwin starts writing church hymns for his father at the age of 5.

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1944: Merwin enters Princeton University and studies with critic R.P. Blackmur (whose teaching assistant was John Berryman) and is a classmate of Galway Kinnell’s. After graduation, Merwin moves to Majorca and tutors Robert Graves’ son; eventually he settles in London, meeting T.S. Eliot and writing for the BBC.

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1952: At 24, Merwin publishes his first book of verse, “A Mask for Janus,” as part of the Yale Younger Poets series edited by W.H. Auden.

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1971: “The Carrier of Ladders” receives a Pulitzer Prize. Merwin denounces the Vietnam War in his Pulitzer acceptance speech and donates the money to an antiwar group.

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1976: Merwin moves to Hawaii to study with Zen master Robert Aitken. Subsequent volumes of verse include “The Compass Flower” (1977) and “The Rain in the Trees” (1988).

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2005: “Migration: New and Selected Poems” wins the National Book Award.

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2009: At 81, Merwin receives a second Pulitzer Prize for “The Shadow of Sirius.”

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