W.S Merwin: Timeline

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Timeline

Source: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/29/entertainment/la-ca-merwin-sidebar-20100829

A W.S. Merwin timeline

1927: William Stanley Merwin is born in New York City. He spends his childhood in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Merwin starts writing church hymns for his father at the age of 5.

1944: Merwin enters Princeton University and studies with critic R.P. Blackmur (whose teaching assistant was John Berryman) and is a classmate of Galway Kinnell's. After graduation, Merwin moves to Majorca and tutors Robert Graves' son; eventually he settles in London, meeting T.S. Eliot and writing for the BBC.

1952: At 24, Merwin publishes his first book of verse, "A Mask for Janus," as part of the Yale Younger Poets series edited by W.H. Auden.

1971: "The Carrier of Ladders" receives a Pulitzer Prize. Merwin denounces the Vietnam War in his Pulitzer acceptance speech and donates the money to an antiwar group.

1976: Merwin moves to Hawaii to study with Zen master Robert Aitken. Subsequent volumes of verse include "The Compass Flower" (1977) and "The Rain in the Trees" (1988).

2005: "Migration: New and Selected Poems" wins the National Book Award.

2009: At 81, Merwin receives a second Pulitzer Prize for "The Shadow of Sirius."

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Lit. Devices

Allusion: A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature. Allusions conjure up biblical authority, scenes from Shakespeare’s plays, historic figures, wars, great love stories, and anything else that might enrich an author’s work.
Anaphora: The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs.
Apostrophe: An address, either to someone who is absent and therefore cannot hear the speaker or to something nonhuman that cannot comprehend. Apostrophe often provides a speaker the opportunity to think aloud.
Cacophony: Language that is discordant and difficult to pronounce, such as this line from John Updike’s "Player Piano": "never my numb plunker fumbles." Cacophony ("bad sound") may be unintentional in the writer’s sense of music, or it may be used consciously for deliberate dramatic effect.
Caesura: A pause within a line of poetry that contributes to the rhythm of the line. A caesura can occur anywhere within a line and need not be indicated by punctuation.
Conceit: An elaborate, usually intellectually ingenious poetic comparison or image, such as an analogy or metaphor.
Elision: Omission of a final or initial sound in pronunciation.
Enjambment: In poetry, when one line ends without a pause and continues into the next line for its meaning. This is also called a run-on line.
Envoi: A short stanza at the end of a poem used either to address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.
Euphemism: The substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener.
Euphony: ("good sound") refers to language that is smooth and musically pleasant to the ear.
Figurative Language: A type of language that varies from the norms of literal language, in which words mean exactly what they say.
Litotes: Creation of a positive or opposite idea through negation.
Metonymy: Substituting a word for another word closely associated with it.
Scansion: The analysis of verse into its metrical or rhythmic components.
Trope: Figure of speech; figurative language.