Bruce Frankel
Available March 4, 2010 Pre-Order Now
Mixed Messages as W. S. Merwin Is Named Poet Laureate at 82
July 3, 2010
News stories reporting this week that W. S. Merwin had been named the 17th poet laureate of the United States were quick to note that the 82-year-old poet leads a relatively reclusive life on a former pineapple plantation in Hawaii. (I always thought poets were supposed to lead relatively reclusive lives. Isn’t that how poetry gets written?)
These stories seemed to ask, albeit gingerly, whether Merwin would be vigorous, public, or peripatetic enough to promote poetry in our celebrity and internet-dominated age. After all, Merwin (Heavens!) even eschews the computer for his writing of poetry.
I found myself wondering about the subtle ways of ageism.
Were Merwin younger, wouldn’t reporters have been curious if the poet, who has written deeply for years about the environment, saw irony in being named poet laureate as the worst environmental accident in history, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, was still unfolding? I wondered, too, at the curiosity that one of America’s most mindful poets would assume office at the very moment there is a debate roiling over whether life on the web is harming our ability to concentrate and think profoundly.
Praise for What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life?
“Bruce Frankel’s upbeat, inspiring, timely book shows how taking a risk and fighting to find a passionate career — at any age — can reinvigorate your life...”
— Susan Shapiro, author of Speed Shrinking and Only As Good as Your Word
