{"id":1984,"date":"2010-07-01T11:14:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T15:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=1984"},"modified":"2010-10-27T13:11:40","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T17:11:40","slug":"w-s-merwin-named-poet-laureate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/01\/w-s-merwin-named-poet-laureate\/","title":{"rendered":"W. S. Merwin Named Poet Laureate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/2692_TN_merwin-ws.gif\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1988\" \/>We congratulate W. S. Merwin on being named Poet Laureate of the United States. Merwin published his <a href=\"http:\/\/parisreview.com\/viewissue.php\/prmIID\/11\">first poem<\/a> with the <em>Review<\/em> in 1955, and we have been proud to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parisreview.com\/viewinterview.php\/prmMID\/2692\">publish<\/a> him ever since. Herewith, to celebrate his appointment (and for the pleasure of retyping it) one of his more <a href=\"http:\/\/parisreview.com\/viewissue.php\/prmIID\/170\">recent contributions<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>To the Long Table<\/p>\n<p>The sun was touching the wet black shoulders of olives<br \/>\nin a chipped dish descended from another century<br \/>\non that day I remember more than half my life ago<br \/>\nand you had been covered with a tablecloth of worn damask<br \/>\nfor lunch out on the balcony overhanging the stream<br \/>\nwith the grapes still small among the vine leaves above us<br \/>\nand near the olives a pitcher of thin black acrid wine<br \/>\nfrom the cellar just below and an omelette on a cracked white platter<br \/>\na wheel of bread goat cheeses salad I forgot what else<br \/>\nthe ducks were asleep down on the far side of the green pond<br \/>\nJacques came and went babbling fussing making his bad jokes<br \/>\nboasting about old days that nobody else remembered<br \/>\nthe lacquered carriages the plumes on the horses and what his mother<br \/>\nhad replied to the admiral whose attentions amused her<br \/>\nall the castles they had lost before he had grown up<br \/>\nand when the meal was over he said you too were for sale<br \/>\nhe had discovered you in a carpenter&#8217;s shop<br \/>\nwhere you had been used as a workbench without regard<br \/>\nfor your true worth and the scars on you came from there<br \/>\nyour history without words upon which words have gathered<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We congratulate W. S. Merwin on being named Poet Laureate of the United States. Merwin published his first poem with the Review in 1955, and we have been proud to publish him ever since. Herewith, to celebrate his appointment (and for the pleasure of retyping it) one of his more recent contributions: To the Long [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[350,348,349],"class_list":["post-1984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-congratulations","tag-poet-laureate","tag-w-s-merwin"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>W. S. 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