Then-poet laureate W.S. Merwin finishes a poetry reading at the Library of Congress in May. The mid-20th century was a heyday of sorts for American poetry: Poets were published and reviewed in newspapers and magazines. Book releases were big events. But in the decades since, as Dana Gioia argued in his 1991 essay “Can Poetry Matter?” it became increasingly isolated and invisible. Spoken-word poetry and other forms began to fill the void.
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There are few opportunities in today’s world for a private audience with a personal hero, but the last appearance of the poet W.S. Merwin as the country’s poet laureate was, for an unusual number of people, one of them. The appearance itself was a rare one: At 82 and living on a former pineapple plantation on Maui, Merwin was well past the stage of his life when he might have regularly stumped for poetry, if he was ever that sort of poet — which he was not. And he was a bit of a recluse.
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