Poetry. In this new masterwork from one of America's foremost poets, W. S. Merwin guides his readers to universal themes through worldly specifics. Every poem in PRESENT COMPANY directly addresses the people and things of everyday life, as in "To the Thief at the Airport" or "To Lingering Regrets". These poems to the world are playful, deadly serious, and full of wonder. Whether writing of an unused vehicle in "To Zbigniew Herbert's Bicycle" or watching fireworks from a distance in "To the Coming Winter," Merwin's poems create a rare and compelling intimacy. There is no one writing today like W. S. Merwin.

Author City: HAIKU, HI USA

During a sixty-year writing career with more than thirty books, W.S. Merwin has received nearly every major literary award, including the National Book Award in 2005 for MIGRATION: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize; in 2009 for THE SHADOW OF SIRIUS and in 1971 for The Carrier of Ladders. In 2006 he won the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress for PRESENT COMPANY. Merwin lives in Hawaii where he raises endangered palm trees. He was appointed the Library of Congress's seventeenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2010-2011.