Poets & Writers – September 2019

O

n the northern coast of the

Hawai’ian island Maui,

off a road leading down to

the cliffs above the shore,

a lush forest grows. Mango trees cov-

ered in vines stand next to palms as

tall as eighty feet, while heliconia and

hibiscus grow far beneath the canopy.

Palm fronds and ferns wave in the air.

The grounds are shady and quiet. And

in the middle of the garden sits a two-

story wooden house filled with books,

the home of poet W. S. Merwin, who

until his death at the age of ninety-

one on March 15, tended to the thou-

sands of palms and plants growing on

the surrounding nineteen acres.

Merwin lived in the garden, which

includes one of the world’s finest

collections of palms, for more than

forty years. In December the Mer-

win Conservancy, which the poet and

Paula Merwin, his wife, established

in 2010 to protect the garden and

encourage others to create their own

artistic and ecological practice, will

become the owners of the house and

garden. “We are preparing to take on

this kuleana—a Hawai’ian word that

means responsibility but also im-

plies incredible honor,” says Sonnet

Kekilia Coggins, the conservancy’s

executive director. “Merwin’s beloved

garden was a product of his imagina-

tion and will be the site of inspiring

and fostering imagination in others

for years and years to come.”

Merwin acquired the land in 1977

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NEWS AND

plantation, the soil had been ruined

from years of farming. For the next

four decades, the Merwins restored

the land into the flourishing forest it

is today, with more than four hundred

taxonomic species of palms from all

over the world.

Coaxing the soil back into health

was not easy: Merwin planted some-

thing every day for a period of time,

and his editor at Copper Canyon Press,

after moving to Maui to study with

the Zen Buddhist master Robert Ait-

ken. He had already published and

translated several books of poetry and

won his first Pulitzer for his 1970 po-

etry collection, The Carrier of Ladders

(Atheneum). When he purchased the

property, previously part of a pineapple

Merwin’s Garden

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