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Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem for however long it takes.

W. S. Merwin

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W. S. Merwin
Age: 91 †
Born: 1927
Born: September 30
Died: 2019
Died: March 15
Poet
Translator
Writer
New York City
New York
William Stanley Merwin
Makes
Touch
Art
Demand
Work
However
Long
Wants
Thinking
Takes
Stop
Genuinely
Anyone
Expecting
Simple
Poem

More quotes by W. S. Merwin

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The global warming is going on. These are not single cases. These are all part of a general way we've been looking at the world. As long as we look at the world that way it's going to go on. Because the idea that the important thing is for some people get rich while the rest of the people work for them is very deeply dug in...
W. S. Merwin
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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 a mistake' - it's too late. This is the world we live with.
W. S. Merwin
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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 longer believe, enlarge the temple.
W. S. Merwin
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Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me
W. S. Merwin
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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 now, as far as you can, for I am an abyss that I am trying to cross.
W. S. Merwin
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Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.
W. S. Merwin
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On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree
W. S. Merwin
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Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.
W. S. Merwin
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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 will take its toll. It's not just the polar bears that are having a hard time what we're doing is gradually impoverishing and poisoning the whole of the rest of life.
W. S. Merwin
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My cradle was a shoe.
W. S. Merwin
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Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.
W. S. Merwin
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The moment we turn over the soil we start poisoning it and we go on poisoning it all the way through... and there's probably not a river in the United States that doesn't have pesticide poisoning in it. The fish are dying. The seas are getting polluted. All of these things are happening. The rain forests are going. That's what the context is.
W. S. Merwin
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I will take with me the emptiness of my hands. What you do not have you find everywhere
W. S. Merwin
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I offer you what I have my Poverty
W. S. Merwin
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I wouldn't be happy about being considered a love poet or an environmental - I don't want any of those tags.
W. S. Merwin
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There are aspects of human life that are not purely destructive, and there is a need to pay attention to the things around us while they are still around us. And you know, in a way, if you don't pay that attention, the anger is just bitterness.
W. S. Merwin
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Sitting over words Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing Not far Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark The echo of everything that has ever Been spoken Still spinning its one syllable Between the earth and silence.
W. S. Merwin
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come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain
W. S. Merwin
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From what we cannot hold the stars are made.
W. S. Merwin
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What you remember saves you.
W. S. Merwin