W.S. Merwin's Conversation with Renee Rothman
(2003 California Academy of Sciences: City Arts and Lectures Series)

W.S. Merwin's books.

Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry. Books read.

How to write specific forms: Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka. Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát. Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Poets: Adam Zagajewski. Billy Collins. Billy Collins exercise. Snorri's Edda. Carl Dennis. Corey Marks. Franz Wright. Gary Young. The Gawain Poet. Jack Gilbert. Jane Hirshfield. Jorie Graham. Karen Braucher. Kay Ryan. Laureate Poets: Britain; USA. Len Anderson. Li-Young Lee. Linda Pastan. Nordic Skalds. Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A). Richard Hugo. Robert Bly. Sara Teasdale. Snorri's Edda. Stephen Dunn. Ted Kooser. W.S. Merwin.

Editor David Lehman. The Best American Poetry: 2006; Guest Editor Billy Collins. The Best American Poetry: 2005; Guest Editor Paul Muldoon.

W.S. Merwin's Conversation with Renee Rothman
(2003 California Academy of Sciences: City Arts and Lectures Series.)
by J. Zimmerman.

Top 500 Poems, William Harmon (Editor). The 500 most anthologized poems in English, from work in 1250 by "anonymous", through Blake, Shakespeare, and Keats, to Wilbur, Larkin, Ginsberg, and Plath.

W.S. Merwin's statement against the Administration's 2003 Plan to Invade Iraq.

When W.S. Merwin referred to his statement against the USA Administration's 2003 plan to invade Iraq, he received strong applause.

His statement, widely published and circulated by Poets Against The War and others, says in part:

It would not have been possible for me ever to trust someone who acquired office by the shameful means Mr. Bush and his abettors resorted to in the last presidential election. His nonentity was rapidly becoming more apparent than ever when the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001, provided him and his handlers with a role for him, that of "wartime leader", which they, and he in turn, were quick to exploit. ... To arrange a war in order to be re-elected outdoes even the means employed in the last presidential election. Mr. Bush and his plans are a greater danger to the United States than Saddam Hussein. W. S. Merwin The above statement is Copyright © 2003 by W. S. Merwin.

Best Poems from the U.S.A. in the Twentieth Century, from The Best American Poetry 2000, David Lehman (Series Editor).

Always individualist, the poets who edited The Best American Poetry volumes from 1988 to 2000 responded in dramatically different ways to the request by the series editor (David Lehman) for a list of the "top fifteen" poems of the twentieth century. No composite list of poems was possible.

For example, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land appeared in the lists of only three poets. (However, the lists contained nine different citations of a poem by T.S. Eliot.)

Perhaps the most popular poet was Robert Frost: altogether there were thirteen different citations of a poem by Robert Frost.

David Lehman's composite list shows poets whose work was nominated by at least two of the guest editors. Alphabetically, the chosen poets are:

• A.R. Ammons.
• W.H. Auden.
• John Ashbery.
• John Berryman.
• Elizabeth Bishop.
• Gwendolyn Brooks.
• Hart Crane.
• Robert Creeley.
• T.S. Eliot.
• Robert Frost.
• Robert Hayden.
• Langston Hughes.
• Randall Jarrell.
• Kenneth Koch.
• Robert Lowell.
• James Merrill.
• Marianne Moore.
• Frank O'Hara.
• Sylvia Plath.
• Ezra Pound.
• Kenneth Rexroth.
• Edwin Arlington Robinson.
• Theodore Roethke.
• James Schuyler.
• Delmore Schwartz.
• William Stafford.
• Gertrude Stein.
• Wallace Stevens.
• Robert Penn Warren.
• Richard Wilbur.
• William Carlos Williams.
• James Wright.

Links.

• Laureate: the Poets Laureate of the U.S.A.
• Laureate: the Poets Laureate of Britain
• Some lists of "Best" Poems

Related Books.

	Americans' Favorite Poems, Editor Robert Pinsky. A "national portrait" of the poems beloved by Americans, who shared their treasured poems with Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the USA (at that time).
The Best American Poetry: 2003	The Best American Poetry: 2003, Editor Yusef Komunyakaa. Includes work by W.S. Merwin.
The Best American Poetry: 2002	The Best American Poetry: 2002, Editor Robert Creeley. Includes work by W.S. Merwin.
The Best American Poetry: 2000	The Best American Poetry: 2000, Editor Rita Dove. Includes work by W.S. Merwin.

Copyright © 2003-2017 by J. Zimmerman. This page displayed using recycled bits.

Related pages: Books of Poetry Form. Alphabetic list of poetry forms and related topics. How to Write Poetry.

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