W.S. Merwin was appointed the new United State Poet Laureate. He takes over from Kay Ryan.

What do I think of this?

I think that I have tried to like Merwin. I can see his book Flower & Hand sitting on my bookshelf.

I think that Merwin and his feel “Deep Image” poet, Robert Bly, represent a certain aesthetic from the sixties that looks a little stale 40 odd years removed.

I think (though this also contradicts my previous statement) that Merwin some really good poems in the late sixties and early seventies (before, I suspect, he settled in Hawaii on a permanent basis) and that he has been re-writing those same poems over and over again in the decades that followed.

Kay Ryan was also a selfless educator and promoter of poetry (a role she had been fulfilling long before she was named Poet Laureate), but I fear that the semi-reclusive Merwin, though an aesthetically defensible choice, will not bring the sort of missionary zeal we got from Ryan (and from Hass and Pinsky, too).

I think it’s possible that I’m just jealous.