W. S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in Union
City, New Jersey, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 1949 to 1951 he
worked as a tutor in France, Portugal, and Majorca. He has since lived in
many parts of the world, most recently on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands.
His many books of poems, prose, and translations are listed at the
beginning of this volume. He has been the recipient of many awards and
prizes, including the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (of
which he is now a Chancellor), the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and the
Bollingen Prize in Poetry; most recently he has received the Governor's
Award for Literature of the state of Hawaii, the Tanning Prize for mastery in
the art of poetry, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, and the
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.