The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress serves as the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans. During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry. The Poet Laureate for 2010 - 2011 is W. S. Merwin.
Read and listen to Merwin's poem, "My Friends"
Merwin received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection, “The Shadow of Sirius".
Listen to the NPR interview with Merwin about the Pulitzer Prize and "The Shadow of Sirius".
Read and listen to his poem "The Pinnacle" from "The Shadow of Sirius" on The Writer's Almanac.
"This is one of the problems with a lot of literary history. Critics tend to assume that writers work out some sort of program for themselves, that it (writing) is much more calculated than it is. If it's any good, talent or the gift of somebody is an urgency, a moving force, and all one can do is try to direct it, and hope that it stay there, and keep it fed and alive, and alert, awake..."
From An Interview of W. S. Merwin by Daniel Bourne in Artful Dodge, a Minnesota-based literary magazine.
Read and listen to Merwin interviewed on Bill Moyers Journal, June 26, 2009
"I’m very old fashioned in what I think poetry is about; I think it’s about people’s lives. And it exists in some mysterious place between the unknown experience of the original writer, and partly unknown experience of the reader, who responds to it in ways that are never completely worked out. I mean, we don’t know why we love a particular poem. We don’t stop to think why we do. We just do, you know." From an interview by Lindsay Ahl, in winter, 2005, on Bliss Lit.