Talk:W. S. Merwin

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A news item involving W. S. Merwin was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 16 March 2019.

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[Untitled]

A clearly impermissible contrib (too complex to bother further characterizing) has been removed here. --Jerzy•t 16:42 & 17:15, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Flesh out bio

I'm not sure i was listening carefully enuf to be able to fully characterize the gaps. But one fact caught my attention when Terry Gross rebroadcast an interview today: he surprised her by saying he had been confined in a mental hospital after enlisting in the military and then becoming a conscientious objector. It may not be important to understanding him, but the assumption that it's not would be highly PoV!
--Jerzy•t 16:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I too have heard the Gross interview, rebroadcast today, upon the announcement yesterday of WSM's appointment as US poet laureate. Certainly his experience with regard to military service is of a piece with his subsequent positions and work with regard to the US's Viet Nam military operation, and his Buddhist perspective and concern for environment. That his rejection of being subject to command to kill another human being would be treated as mental illness -- it is interesting that this was even in 1946, after the war -- is, I think, important to understanding part of the times and culture in which he matured, and has to be regarded as a signal part of his maturation as a person and as a writer!

I find "His father was a Presbyterian minister ... Merwin's parents were uneducated" nearly surely a laughable blunder for anyone acquainted with the long-established educational standards of the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition, and Presbyterians in the US and even the colonies previously -- going all the way back to Calvin and Geneva; so much so as itself to verge on leaving the statement open to suspicion of reflecting ignorance.

It is no accident that Princeton University -- incidentally in the same state, New Jersey, where Merwin's father served -- began as a Presbyterian school. Granted that educations, like opinions, are not all of the same level, but it would be highly unusual for a Presbyterian minister even at that time not to have been a graduate of both a college and a seminary, even one who like, sad to say, many college graduates today, may not have completely mastered the rudiments of the English language in discourse. I know nearly nothing about Merwin's mother or her educational level other than by his own report her having been orphaned and I take it that it was she who read him poetry and perhaps even taught him to write from nearly as soon as he learned to talk.

I can't help but wonder whether Merwin himself in his even understandable rejection of his childhood religious environment, nurture, and culture has misperceived, misunderstood, and underestimated the extent of his father's own educational background.

However Merwin subsequently came to regard the Presbyterian culture in which he grew up, and the influence both it and his perception awares or unawares of it has had on him (just as for, say, Norman Maclean or Marianne Moore), it is imperative that they all be portrayed as appropriately and accurately as possible if at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Huguenot (talk • contribs) 19:10, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Overlinking?

I counted over 60 Easter egg links to years in poetry and literature in the form of [[XXXX in poetry|XXXX]] in this article before I lost count. Does anybody think they are worth keeping? I don't. --John (talk) 02:17, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do. And WP:EGG states make sure that the reader knows what to expect. At the top of the "Bibliography" section, the reader is told exactly what to expect, with an explanation of the year-in-poetry links. The top of that style guideline states Appropriate links provide instant pathways to locations within and outside the project that are likely to increase readers' understanding of the topic at hand. The topic at hand in the list of Merwin's books is his books. Each link provides the context for that book in terms of the larger poetry scene around Merwin at the time of publication. Readers will have an interest in knowing what other poets were publishing at the same time, getting awards at the same time and so on. The links are also rather unabtrusive -- it's a list, after all, and we're not interrupting some flow or distracting our readers by it. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 15:43, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

John, you may not have noticed the explanation at the top of the Bibliography and Awards sections. I notice you didn't remove them when you removed the links, which I've now restored. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 15:46, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep links The links don't bother me at all. I hadn't thought about the context that JohnWBarber brings up above, but that is an excellent use for these links. Most users can easily hit the back button in the browser if they don't like where a link takes them. — Diiscool (talk) 16:01, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I still think they are useless and look stupid, but it isn't the end of the world if they remain. --John (talk) 22:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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