W.S. Merwin, Surrounded by Green

March 22, 2019

The poet W. S. Merwin recently died, leaving us with more than 50 books of poetry and prose and a legacy that wove together his interest in poetry, Buddhist philosophy, and ecology. Geobiologist A. Hope Jahren remembers Merwin in the New York Times, with an evocative description of visiting the Merwin Conservancy, an island within an island filled with trees Merwin planted himself. “Mr. Merwin wrote leaves of poetry, but he also grew real trees, thousands of them, creating beauty out of thin air and fostering life beyond his own,” Jahren writes. “Even in paradise, no one lives forever, but both Mr. Merwin’s poems and his palms will outlive us all.”

Image credit: David Eickhoff

is a writer and illustrator. She is the author of two illustrated books, Last Night's Reading (Penguin Books, 2015) and Sanpaku (Archaia 2018).