W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927. From 1949 to 1951 he worked as a tutor in France, Mallorca, and Portugal; for several years afterward he made the greater part of his living by translating from French, Spanish, Latin, and Portuguese. His many awards include the 2005 National Book Award in Poetry for Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2005), the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Tanning Prize for mastery in the art of poetry, the Bollingen Award, the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize, the 2006 Bobbitt Poetry Prize for Present Company (Copper Canyon, 2005), as well as fellowships from the Rockefeller and the Guggenheim Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the author of dozens of books of poetry and prose. For the past thirty years he has lived in Hawaii.

Other poems by W.S. Merwin in Verse Daily:
July 12, 2005:   "To a Tortoiseshell Lyre" "Do you know how beautiful you are..."
May 12, 2005:  "Summer" ""Be of this brightness dyed..."
April 25, 2005:  "Vixen" ""Comet of stillness princess of what is over..."

For a list of books by W.S. Merwin click here.

Other poems on the web by W.S. Merwin:
Five poems
Five poems
Three poems

W.S. Merwin according to Wikipedia.

About Spanish Ballads:

"For a translator to be faithful and readable, as Mr. Merwin always is, is no small achievement, and this selection of his translations is certainly one of the most readable and enjoyable volumes to appear in a long time."
—The New York Times