he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
One of our favorite meals is one we call "Paula's Bows," a healthy dish featuring pasta bows, feta cheese, tomatoes and garlic; we gathered the ingredients again this week when we heard the good news that W. S. Merwin will become the 17th Poet Laureate of the United States.
"Paula" is Paula Schwartz, Merwin's wife, who graciously cooked and served it to us — and gave Jeanne the recipe — when, in 1993, we visited them for lunch on the slopes of Haleakala, a dormant volcano (we were at the University of Hawaii, in Honolulu, for the fall semester). Tucked deep in the woods on the island of Maui, off winding Hana Road, their home is the Shangri-la, or maybe the Xanadu, of a poet's dream house; so Merwin is naturally reluctant to spend too much time in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, the duties of our national laureate aren't overly demanding.
In America, even being the esteemed Poet Laureate of the entire country is a fairly obscure job (quick, who were our last three Poets Laureate?). This national position only began in 1986 with Robert Penn Warren, although previously there had been a less formal appointment called Consultant in Poetry. (The full title today is "Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress," a prosy mouthful.)
We're more or less copying the English tradition, which began back in 1668 when Charles II made John Dryden the nation's poet laureate for life. In England, it remained a lifetime appointment right up until 1999, when Andrew Motion was appointed to a ten-year term, as was Carol Ann Duffy, England's first female laureate, who replaced him. America, despite its late start, beat England to the punch by already having had four female laureates (Mona Van Duyn, 1992-93; Rita Dove, 1993-95; Louise Glück, 2003-04; and Kay Ryan, 2009-10). Last year, when Duffy and Ryan were reigning, we had the very modern situation of England and America's laureates both being female and openly gay. Poetry may not make anything happen, but it does reflect the remarkable changes in our societies.
Americans are appointed for one or two years, depending on which they prefer, and paid an annual stipend of $35,000. English Laureates are paid £5000 ($10,000) plus, traditionally, "a barrel of sherry," which is a nice touch. I'm not sure they always get one, but the popular John Betjeman — laureate from 1972 to 1984 — insisted on it.
James H. Billington, our Librarian of Congress, is the one who makes the actual appointment, with advice from a committee, and the only surprise about the choice of the 82-year-old Merwin is that it didn't happen earlier: he's written over 30 books of poetry, and they have been awarded almost every prize available to a poet, from the Pulitzer (twice) to the National Book Award.
But when we visited him that day in 1993, this famously private poet turned out to be not a recluse in the J. D. Salinger mold, but a warm and witty talker, who was and is definitely a citizen of this world — and a world-class gardener. Welcoming us in a sweat-stained blue T-shirt with a "1982 Literary Festival" logo — he'd been working in his garden — he, and soon Paula, made us feel like old friends, breaking out the wine and showing us around the garden, with its rare Hawaiian plants and trees that he's trying to preserve; and then their magical wooden house, made out of the local dark eucalyptus bark, that he helped design and build.
We talked all afternoon, and Jeanne and I won't ever forget it, and of course it floods back (like Proust's madeleine) whenever Jeanne makes "Paula's Bows." Merwin is, as one can infer from his poems, a passionate pacifist and environmentalist, but there's a calmness about his demeanor that reflects his long study of Zen Buddhism (he went originally to Hawaii to study under the Zen master Robert Aitken, and meditates every day).
His musical and elliptical poetry is written long-hand in notebooks, or on whatever's handy, mostly in the morning. Like Emily Dickinson's, his poems "tell all the truth but tell it slant — / …The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind."
Some years after our visit, he gave a dazzling reading from his long narrative poem, The Folding Cliffs, to an overflow crowd at the University of Tampa. That was a great treat for us — and having W(illiam) S(tanley) Merwin as America's next Poet Laureate will be a treat for the whole country.
you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write
—Both quotes are from "Berryman" by W.S. Merwin (b. 1927)
—Peter Meinke is the first Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg. The position is unpaid and the term uncertain — a shadowy limbo where poets grow like mushrooms. The recipe for "Paula's Bows" can be found online at cltampa.com.
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2010.