Poet laureate captures crowd
W.S. Merwin reads his work at Storm King
CORNWALL — Most of the standing-room-only crowd at Storm King Art Center came to see a world-renowned poet, but Richard Orr came to see his long-lost cousin.
Orr's mother was the first cousin of United States poet laureate W.S. Merwin, and books of Merwin's dating back to 1960 line Orr's bookshelves. Orr and Merwin, 83, corresponded through letters for years, though that eventually fell by the wayside as the physical distance became too great.
But once Orr heard his two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cousin would be back on the East Coast, he knew he had to make the trip.
"We thought we might not get another chance to see him," Orr said.
Orr and his wife joined roughly 170 others to listen to Merwin read some two dozen poems about nature, animals and the outdoors.
"The idea that the rest of life is here for us to exploit is deadly," said the poet laureate in his open remarks.
Merwin's sandy white hair, olive green sports jacket, lyrical verses and elegant manner of speech cast a spell over the audience.
The mostly older crowd closed their eyes or stared wistfully at the hills in the distance as Merwin read one poem after the next.
"It just totally lifted my mood to another place," said Newburgh resident Barbara Adams. "It's going to take hours for me to get back to my normal life."
Storm King School admissions director Joanna Evans grew up in Brooklyn, and she was touched by Merwin's poem about his closest childhood friend, a tree.
"When you grow up in a city, you do a lot of gazing out the window," she said.
Orr had traveled 3.5 hours and listened to 75 minutes of poems just for the chance to reconnect with his relative. But he still wasn't sure what to say once he arrived at the front of Merwin's book singing line.
"I'll find out when I speak to him," Orr said.
WITNESS I want to tell what the forests were like. I will have to speak in a forgotten language.