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March 24, 2019
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Andrew Graybill

Andrew Graybill is chair and professor of history and codirector of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. His latest book (coedited with Adam Arenson) is  Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States.

Territories of Conquest

A new history of the bloodletting that opened the frontier

by Andrew Graybill | Tuesday, September 06, 2016

Beyond the Colonies

What else happened during the year of independence?

by Andrew Graybill | Monday, June 09, 2014

Tour de Horse

A masterly retelling of a death on the Plains

by Andrew Graybill | Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Newsletter

THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

Remembering W. S. Merwin

by John Kaag

W. S. Merwin, one of the most celebrated and prolific poets of his generation, died last Friday at the age of 91. A former U.S. poet laureate and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Merwin was also known for his work as a conservationist. After moving to Hawaii in the 1970s, he began the decades-long project of restoring different plant species to the former pineapple plantation where he lived. Merwin was notoriously difficult to contact, but in the fall of last year, John Kaag managed to interview him over the phone. Merwin, he reports, repeated the same lines throughout their conversation: “The time of wisdom cannot be measured, and, for me, wisdom is the garden. There is no time in the garden.” In an essay for the Scholar, Kaag explores this relationship between gardening and the passage of time, and how it is reflected in Merwin’s life and poetry.