lovely, but they also feel a little over-
con sidered, ju st a s when he fi r st st a r ted
planting on that land. Right away he
wanted to reintroduce rare native spe-
cies, but it didn’t work. He wasn’t able
to force t he pla nt s to g row i n dead soi l.
Through a daily life practice, he built
a nd nu r t u red bot h t he soi l of t he fore st
and the ground of his poems.”
Poems literally nourish the forest
ground: Merwin would compost pa-
pers and correspondence—including
the manuscripts sent to him by hope-
ful poets seeking a blurb—and add
them to the soil. Coggins says she
still comes across the notepads and
pens he stashed around the garden
in case he wanted to jot down a line.
Until he lost his eyesight toward the
end of his life, Merwin spent most of
his days writing, meditating in the
Zendo he built in the middle of the
garden, and tending to the plants. “It
is an enchantment, all of it, from the
daydreaming to the digging, the heav-
ing, the weeding and watching and
watering, the heat, and the stirrings at
the edges of the days,” he wrote in his
book What Is a Garden? (University of
South Carolina Press, 2016).
People cannot leave the grounds—
muddy and full of mosquitoes as it
is—without feeling changed, Cog-
gins says. Poet Naomi Shihab Nye, a
former board member of the conser-
vancy, says, “Visiting always felt like
stepping into another world. A deep,
sacred, silent world, full of grow-
ing and chittering birds and time-
less light and shadow.” Wiegers sees
the garden as a work of land art, likeMichael Wiegers, estimates he planted
several thousand plants, many of which
died in the first few years. Wiegers,
who is also on the conservancy board,
says the process of restoring the land
parallels Merwin’s evolution as a poet.
“Both poems and palm forestation
seem very effortless, almost casual on
the surface, yet both are very carefully
considered, and earned over years of
practice,” he says. “His first poems are
DANA ISOKAWA is the
senior editor of Poets &
Writers Magazine.LATOYA JORDAN is a
writer from Brooklyn, New
York. Follow her on Twitter,
@latoyadjordan.MICHAEL BOURNE is a
contributing editor of Poets &
Writers Magazine.JESSICA KASHIWABARA
is the senior web editor of
Poets & Writers, Inc.CONTRIBUTORSW. S. Merwin in the garden in 2010.13 POETS & WRITERS