SOURCE: An interview in Southwest Review, Vol. 68, No. 2, Spring, 1983, pp. 164-80.

Myers is an American educator, poet, biographer, and critic. Simms is an American educator, poet, and critic. In the following interview, which was conducted in 1982 during Southern Methodist University's eighth annual literature festival, Merwin comments on creative writing programs, his development as a poet, the writing process, and his ideas regarding translation.

[Simms]: Bill, unlike most contemporary poets, you have not made a career of teaching. Recently, you started teaching for the first time. How do you like it?

[Merwin]: I love it. But I'm very spoiled. I'm teaching at Cooper Union, in New York City, and there's no Humanities major at Cooper Union; it's basically for architects, fine arts students, and civil engineers. They're taking a poetry course because they want to take a poetry course, not because anybody told them to. They want to. So...