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W. S. Merwin

(1927–2019) Poet

64 quotes in 380 categories

W. S. Merwin was a poet.

Quick Facts About W. S. Merwin

Born: September 30, 1927
Died: March 15, 2019
Profession: Poet

About W. S. Merwin

[Wikidata] American poet (1927–2019)... | [Wikipedia] William Stanley Merwin was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing in

Quotes by W. S. Merwin · Page 2

Your absence has gone through me

Absence

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I say to my breath once again, little breath come from in front of me, go away behind me, row me quietly…

Abyss

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I have with me all that I do not knowI have lost none of it.

Knows

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“Inside this pencil crouch words that have never been written never been spoken never been taught they’re hiding they’re awake in there…

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What a great poem teaches you - and it's not intellectual at all - is the resonance in the language that's heard…

Great

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I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring.

Has beens

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I can't imagine ever writing anything of any kind on a machine. I never tried to write either poetry or prose on…

Computers

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I think this is one of the benefits of getting older: that one has that perspective on things farther away. One is…

Getting older

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What turned me into an environmentalist, on my eleventh birthday, was seeing the first strip mine.

Birthday

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The time of wisdom cannot be measured, and for me, wisdom is the garden. There is no time in the garden.

Cannot

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If you can't bear what's happening to the natural world, if you can't bear the way we treat each other; if you…

Bears

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Politically it would be terribly repressive to prevent people from having as many children as they want. But something's got to prevent…

Children

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Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me

Death

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Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole…

Lost

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The past is always - one moment it's what happened three minutes ago, and one minute it's what happened 30 years ago.…

Dreams

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Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars It is my emptiness among them While they drift farther away in…

Astronomy

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I think memory is essential to what we are. If we - we wouldn't be able to talk to each other without…

I think

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Now all my teachers are dead except silence.

Silence

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The Divine Comedy is a political poem and when you say poetry is not about - he's always quoted out of context,…

Care

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I'm very pessimistic about the future of the human species. We have been so indifferent to life on the whole that it…

Bears

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There is part of a structure in which every species is related to every other species. And they're built up on species,…

Biology

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To succeed [,] consider what is as though it were past, deem yourself inevitable and take credit for it. If you no…

Believe

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I have with me all that I do not know. I have lost none of it.

Funny

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We're losing a species every few seconds. We cannot put them back. If we change our mind and say, 'Oops, we made…

Failure

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There are poets who believe that you shouldn't engage at all in any cause. And there's something to be said for that.…

Believe

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W. S. Merwin by topic

Way (13) Time (10) Poetry (10) Life (9) World (8)