W.S. Merwin, Hawaii-based poet, will serve as 17th U.S. laureate

"I could just spend all afternoon gazing at the river," he said, which may have inspired his early love of the novels of Joseph Conrad. It also made him restless for a life beyond the "rather claustrophobic" one he seemed destined for as a child.

After deciding to be a poet, he went to visit Ezra Pound, then incarcerated at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington (for his support of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini during World War II).

"I didn't know about his politics, fortunately," said Merwin, who was a pacifist and incarcerated in a naval mental hospital near the end of the second world war, according to an interview he gave to NPR in April 2009. "He said: Translate. You haven't got anything to write at 18, and you have to write every day. The only way to do it is to learn languages and translate." Merwin has translated ever since, from French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, among other languages.

Merwin's encounter with Buddhism also had a profound impact on his life, though he describes it with chicken-and-egg ambiguity: "Did I become interested in Buddhism because it was going to change me, or because of some affinity I found in Buddhism?"

The power of poetry, and art in general, to connect us more deeply with ourselves, rather than the empty rodomontade and blather of public life, is fundamental to Merwin's mix of ecological and personal vision. A sonnet by Shakespeare, or a painting by Picasso, says Merwin, "belongs to each of us in a completely distinct and original way."

And that is deeply political.

"It means you are paying attention to it as yourself," he says, not as someone merely mouthing the platitudes of public discourse.

Merwin, who travels to the mainland about twice a year, says he will visit the Library of Congress, give readings and participate in public sessions.

"I like the Q and A format best of all," he says, "because people get to ask their own questions."