W. S. Merwin American poet and translator
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
If a poem is not forgotten as soon as the circumstances of its origin, it begins at once to evolve an existence of its own, in minds and lives, and then even in words, that its singular maker could never have imagined.
—W. S. Merwin, American poet and translator, Foreword to a translation of Dante's Purgatorio, 2000
