On Being Awarded the Pulitzer Prize | W.S. Merwin

Submit a letter:

I’ve been informed that I have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for 1971.

I am pleased to know of the judges’ regard for my work, and I want to thank them for their wish to make their opinion public.

But after years of the news from Southeast Asia, and the commentary from Washington, I am too conscious of being an American to accept public congratulation with good grace, or to welcome it except as an occasion for expressing openly a shame which many Americans feel, day after day, helplessly and in silence.

I want the prize money to be equally divided between Alan Blanchard (Cinema Repertory Theater, Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, California)—a painter who was blinded by a police weapon in California while he was watching American events from a roof, at a distance—and the Draft Resistance.

W. S. Merwin
Montana, May, 1971

Once Later

a poem

May 7, 2015 issue

Early One Morning

May 7, 2015 issue

To the Knife

May 7, 2015 issue

Letters:

W.H. Auden

Saying No

July 1, 1971

Once Later

a poem

May 7, 2015 issue

Early One Morning

May 7, 2015 issue

To the Knife

May 7, 2015 issue

W.S. Merwin

W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in Union City, New Jersey, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 1949 to 1951 he worked as a tutor in France, Portugal, and Majorca. He has since lived in many parts of the world, most recently on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. He is the author of many books of poems, prose, and translations and has received both the Pulitzer and the Bollingen Prizes for poetry, among numerous other awards. His new poetry collection is The Moon Before Morning.

This Issue

June 3, 1971