Breaking news: W.S. Merwin gets email!

A few weeks ago, I got a short note from Hawaii — our new poet laureate, W.S. Merwin, had a quick  correction to make to his essay in An Invisible Rope.  He hoped he wasn’t too late, he had scribbled, but he only had snail-mail to reach me — he doesn’t do fax or texting.  He barely does phone calls.  The octogenarian poet still didn’t have email, “Thank God,” he wrote.

Last July, I wondered how effective our unworldy pineapple farmer (or former pineapple farmer) would be as a U.S. poet laureate, given these circumstances.  “I do like a very quiet life,” he said by telephone to the New York Times after learning of his appointment. “I can’t keep popping back and forth between here and Washington.”  It all seemed a fairly hopeless affair.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw W.S. Merwin’s name in my electronic inbox this morning.  Hell has indeed frozen over.

Although clearly a form letter, he wrote:

Thank you for your kind words.

I was deeply honored and moved by the warmth and generosity behind all the messages. I look forward to serving as your Poet Laureate and I hope our paths will cross over the coming year.

W.S. Merwin

What can we say?  I knew a few late adopters — while working on Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, I communicated with Sven Birkerts via his son’s email account, and Peter Dale acquired one expressly to work on our manuscript for Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven — but both those cases were years ago.  Takeaway: Never underestimate the human capacity for change.

Best of luck, Bill — and good luck with the poet laureate thingumme!

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven View all posts by Cynthia Haven