The River Sound

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, and over the course of his life, he lived in many parts of the world.  He was the recipient of many awards and prizes, including the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, 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. He died in 2019.