![](https://paw.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/styles/feature_image/public/images/content/i-f0577a6107e9428f083b17cbe5e02fc1-merwin_5.jpg?itok=0_hYYvMw)
Tiger of the Week: W.S. Merwin ’48
![i-f0577a6107e9428f083b17cbe5e02fc1-merwin.jpg](https://paw.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/styles/feature_image/public/images/content/i-f0577a6107e9428f083b17cbe5e02fc1-merwin_5.jpg?itok=0_hYYvMw)
Poetry will be in the spotlight at Princeton next week, as the University welcomes Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and a dozen other prominent poets for the first Princeton Poetry Festival, April 27 and 28. So it is fitting that our Tiger of the Week, W.S. Merwin ’48, is a distinguished man of letters. On April 20, Merwin won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for The Shadow of Sirius (Copper Canyon Press), a collection of what the award citation called "luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory." Merwin also won a Pulitzer in 1971 for The Carrier of Ladders.
As an undergraduate, Merwin was influenced by two notable English professors: highly regarded literary critic R.P. Blackmur and poet John Berryman. Merwin wrote about his Princeton mentors in his 2005 memoir, Summer Doors. While Berryman was a merciless editor, his exhaustive knowledge of poetry made an impression on the young Merwin. But Blackmur, who famously rose to prominence in the academy without the benefit of a college degree, offered the most memorable advice: "A good education," he told Merwin, "won't do you any harm."
(Photo courtesy Pulitzer.org/Mark Hanauer)
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