Contemporary American poets. 1927 was born in new york, and his father was a Presbyterian minister. Mervyn wrote a hymn to his father when he was a child. Besides, he has little contact with poetry. Later, he entered Princeton University, where he read many poems and learned to write some poems. Mervyn studied European literature thoroughly and mastered several foreign languages, which enabled him to absorb nutrients directly from foreign literature. After graduating from college, I lived in Britain, France, Portugal and other places for a long time, engaged in the translation of European literature, translated many medieval poems and modern symbolic poems, and began to write poems at the same time. 1952 published the first book of poetry, The Mask of the Double-faced God, which became famous all over the world. This collection of poems, including ballads, ballads and carols, is deeply influenced by the forms of medieval poetry, and its ancient vocabulary endows poetry with mysterious colors. The famous poet Orton selected this collection of poems as the best of the year and recommended it to Yale Young Poets Series. 1954, Mervyn published another collection of poems, Dancing Bear, which is also a traditional poem. By 1960, Mervyn was influenced by surrealism in the process of translating Spanish poetry and lost interest in traditional poetry. Therefore, his poems began to shift from the exposition of events to the profound analysis of thoughts. The moving target released by 1963 has a new style. In the poetry anthology Lice published by 1967, the change is more obvious. His poems have become more concise, more predictive of the future, and less related to specific events of individuals, history and society. 1970 published The Man Carrying a Ladder with the theme of death and nothingness in life. This collection of poems won the Pulitzer Prize in 197 1. Mervyn's era is the era when neo-surrealism swept the United States. Although he did not join the circle of neo-surrealism, his poems are more interesting because of the long-term influence of European surrealism. Critics generally believe that his achievements far exceed those of many neo-surrealist poets.