News at Eleven: "I said something about the conservancy

to [Librarian of Congress] professor [James] Billington and he said, 'Well, I hope you won't make this political.' I said, 'James, every position is political. But I'm certainly not going to use the position to blow my own horn.'"

Billington, who selects the poet laureate, says Merwin is making some of his most universal work right now, adding, "His environmental concerns are very powerful, but they grow out of an even deeper sensibility about human beings and their relation to life and the rest of nature itself."

from Los Angeles Times: W.S. Merwin is green as U.S. poet laureate
then Idaho Mountain Express: Poet W.S. Merwin takes nature seriously
then Los Angeles Times: A W.S. Merwin timeline

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