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PEOPLE & ARTS Tuesday 26 March 2019
W.S. Merwin, prize-winning poet of nature, dies at 91

By HILLEL ITALIE baby, a boy she meant to cluding a verse production
Associated Press name after her father, died of “Rumpelstiltskin.”
NEW YORK (AP) — W.S. Mer- “when he had scarcely Times spent in Boston with
win, a prolific and versatile wakened.” Robert Lowell convinced
master of modern poetry In a household as grim as him to concentrate on po-
who evolved through a an abandoned parking lot, etry, and by the end of the
wide range of styles as he the way out was pointed decade, he was regarded
celebrated nature, con- by words, which seemed as a highly talented artist
demned war and industri- to float around Merwin like immersed in Old English lit-
alism and reached for the magic bubbles. He would erature, his verse likened by
elusive past, died Friday. try to memorize scripture The New York Times to “a
He was 91. he heard his father recite broad river flowing through
A Pulitzer Prize winner and and fairy tales his mother peaceful land.”
former U.S. poet laureate, told him. By age 13, he was By the early 1960s, he was
Merwin completed more already composing hymns. marching against nuclear
than 20 books, from early He received a scholarship weapons and throwing
works inspired by myths from Princeton University, off the rules of grammar,
and legends to angry pro- becoming the first family inspired by his “growing
tests against environmental member to attend college, sense that punctuation al-
destruction and the conflict and began meeting some luded to an assumed alle-
in Vietnam to late medita- of the great poets of the giance to the rational pro-
tions on age and time. present and future. Galway tocol of written language.”
He wrote rhymes and blank Kinnell was a classmate at Meanwhile, Vietnam and
verse, a brief report on the Princeton and John Berry- urbanization darkened
month of January and a man a teacher. his vision. “I/can hear the
book-length story in verse In this Sept. 29, 1994 file photo, poet W.S. Merwin is recognized After graduating, he lived blood crawling over the
about colonialism and the by the Academy of American Poets after winning the Tanning in Spain and tutored the plains,” he wrote in “The
birth of modern Hawaii. Like Prize in Washington. son of Robert Graves. Child.” In “The Crust,” the
his hero, Henry David Thore- Associated Press In London, he became downfall of a tree is a met-
au, he was inspired equally Merwin received virtually was born in New York City friends with Sylvia Plath aphor for the severing of
by reverence for the planet every honor a poet could in 1927. He soon moved and Ted Hughes and re- civilization:
and anger against injustice. ask for — more, it turned to Union City, New Jersey, mained close through the and with the tree
He died in his sleep at his out, than he desired. In living for years on a street collapse of their marriage went all the lives in it
home on the Hawaiian is- protest of the Vietnam now called “W.S. Merwin and Plath’s suicide, in 1963. that slept in it ate in it
land of Maui, according to War, he declined a Pulit- Way,” then to Scranton, Merwin’s then-wife, Dido met in it believed in it
publisher Copper Canyon zer in 1971 for “The Carrier Pennsylvania. Merwin, would allege that In the 1970s, he settled per-
Press and the Merwin Con- of Ladders,” saying he was In a long, autobiographi- Plath had a crush on him. manently in Hawaii and
servancy, which the poet “too conscious of being an cal poem, “Testimony,” he Merwin’s promise was obvi- studied under the Zen Bud-
founded. American to accept public remembered his father as a ous. His first collection, “A dhist master Robert Aitken.
“He is an artist with a very congratulation with good weary, disappointed man, Mask for Janus,” was se- Divorced years earlier from
clear spiritual profile, and grace, or to welcome it subsisting on “pinched sal- lected by W.H. Auden for Dorothy Jeanne Ferry and
intellectual and moral con- except as an occasion for aries” and “traveling sick the coveted Yale Series of from Dido Milroy, he mar-
sistency, which encom- expressing openly a shame with some nameless illumi- Younger Poets competition ried his third wife, Paula
passes both his work and which many Americans nating ill.” His mother was and was published in 1952. Schwartz, in a Buddhist cer-
his life,” fellow poet Edward feel.” orphaned early in life and Throughout the 1950s, he emony in 1983. She died in
Hirsch once said of him. William Stanley Merwin grieved again when her wrote poems and plays, in- 2017.q

‘The Last Second’ is a popcorn movie in print form

By JEFF AYERS her career when she sup- lactus has just launched to stop the impending de-
Associated Press posedly lost her mind dur- has also been manipulated struction even as they
“The Last Second” by Cath- ing a space walk outside by Patel, and when the battle a reluctant Brous-
erine Coulter and J.T. Ellison the International Space countdown on board the sard who cannot believe
(Gallery). Station. Nobody believes craft reaches zero, it will re- that Patel would want him
The launch of a corporate her when she says that lease a nuclear-triggered dead and responsible for a
satellite covertly begins aliens that call themselves electromagnetic pulse that trajectory change with the
the countdown to the end the Numen saved her life, will throw Earth and the sur- satellite launch.
of the world in Catherine and that they still routinely vivors back to the Stone Coulter and Ellison’s se-
Coulter and J.T. Ellison’s communicate telepathi- Age. Patel believes that this ries has locked itself into a
latest thriller featuring FBI cally with her. will make her immortal, and wonderful groove. It is fun
Special Agents Nicholas Broussard believed in her she will become one with following these agents and
Drummond and Michaela abilities, which is why he the aliens at that point. their allies as they continue
Caine. hired her. He has no idea The FBI Special Agents to experience chaos, may-
The head of the tech com- that, when he’s on the Nicholas Drummond and hem, and ruthless villains
pany Galactus, Jean-Pierre verge of finding the Holy Michaela Caine are thrust that guarantee a fun time.
Broussard, is on a treasure Grail, Patel has arranged into the chase to save the “The Last Second” is a per-
hunt to find the elusive Holy for the retrieval of the ar- world when one of their fect example of a popcorn
Grail, and he believes he’s This cover image released by tifact while also killing him own is assigned to protect movie in print form, and
found it. His second in com- Gallery Books shows “The Last so she can take over the Broussard, and is almost their latest in this series ar-
mand, Nevaeh Patel, is a Second,” a novel by Catherine company. The communi- killed in a bold attack. Now guably is the best one to
Coulter and J.T. Ellison.
former astronaut who lost Associated Press cations satellite that Ga- it’s a race against the clock date.q