The Library of Congress appointed W.S. Merwin the new poet laureate. I voted for Nas.

Say Queensbridge! It’s the melange.

Short biography of Merwin: He won the National Book Award and a pair of Pulitzers for poetry, the most recent of which was in 2009.

Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 but moved to Hawaii in 1976 to study Zen Buddhism. (That will be my excuse to move to a tropical clime, also.) Now, he lives on a former pineapple plantation on Maui.

He gave the best writing advice ever in his poem, “Berryman:”

you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write

If you want a longer biography or more poems from Merwin, click the link.

Want to watch a free Shakespeare performance? Of course, you want do. You’re reading a book blog.

The Cleveland Shakespeare Festival is offering free performances of Titus Andronicus and The Merry Wives of Windsor Saturday and Sunday, respectively, at James A. Garfield’s home, Lawnfield, in Mentor. The performances start at 6 p.m.

If you can’t make the performances this weekend, don’t fret. The CSF will be performing throughout the Cleveland area all summer.

Just so you know, Titus Andronicus is the wrong play to bring children to. I’m serious. One character gets raped. Then, the rapists cut off her hands and tongue, so she can’t tell anyone.

Seriously, let the kids watch fireworks, instead.

Speaking of Shakespeare, the blog Everyday Shakespeare hypothesizes how some of the bard’s characters would explain childbirth to their children.

One more thing, Christopher Hitchens has cancer of the esophagus.

In 2008. Hitchens released God is Not Great, which criticized many major religions. God has since denied that this was a retaliatory strike.

In all seriousness, we hope Hitchens gets better. Hell may be other people, but it is also esophageal cancer.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Finally, this is not about books, but it’s about basketball and Cleveland. Close enough for me.