Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.

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Merwin's literary papers are held at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. S. He was also fascinated with things that he saw as links to the past such as the building behind his home that had once been a barn that housed a horse and carriage.

Residing in Hawaii he writes prolifically and is dedicated to the restoration of the islands' rainforests. During the 1960s anti-war movement Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s Merwin's writing influence derived from his interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology.