Discovering William Stanley Merwin’s Facebook Page Still Exists/ poem by Matthew J. Spireng

Discovering William Stanley Merwin’s Facebook Page Still Exists


Dead over four and a half years
and he still has thousands of friends
some of whom are wishing him

happy birthday posting his poems
praising him and I thought of including
punctuation here but even though

that is what I usually do it seemed
I should omit it this once as I remember
WS Merwin and his work I so

enjoy reading and enjoyed listening to
when he read it though I cannot recall
how many times it was but that is

something I could perhaps answer
if I took his signed books off the shelf
and checked to see if he dated them

when he signed them as some poets do
although he was like no other poet
as no other poet was like him 

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Matthew J. Spireng’s 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize-winning book Good Work was published in 2020 by Evening Street Press. A 13-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of two other full-length poetry books, What Focus Is and Out of Body, winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award, and five chapbooks. Website: matthewjspireng.com.