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After college at Amherst and a period of adventure in Europe, Merrill returned to the New York art world of the 1950s (he was friendly with W. H. Auden, Maya Deren, Truman Capote, Larry Rivers, Elizabeth Bishop, and other midcentury luminaries) and began publishing poems, plays, and novels. In 1953, he fell in love with an aspiring writer, David Jackson. They explored “boys and bars” as they made their life together in Connecticut and later in Greece and Key West. At the same time, improbably, they carried on a forty-year conversation with spirits of the Other World by means of a Ouija board. The board became a source of poetic inspiration for Merrill, culminating in his prizewinning, uncanny, one-of-a-kind work The Changing Light at Sandover. In his virtuosic poetry and in the candid letters and diaries that enrich every page of this deliciously readable life, Merrill created a prismatic art of multiple perspectives and comic self-knowledge, expressing hope for a world threatened by nuclear war and environmental catastrophe. Holding this life and art together in a complex, evolving whole, Hammer illuminates Merrill's “chronicles of love & loss” and the poignant personal journey they record.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 14, 2015 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780385353083
- File size: 67093 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780385353083
- File size: 67093 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from July 1, 2015
Hammer (English & dept. chair, Yale Univ.; editor, Hart Crane: Complete Poems) sheds light on poet James Merrill (1926-95) by deftly mixing literary criticism with biography. The objective seems to look at the line between art and life in Merrill's poetry--not the least of which is seen in the intersection between Merrill's obsession with the Ouija board as literary starter and some of his experimental long poems, "Mirabell: Books of Number" (1978) and "The Changing Light at Sandover" (1982) and the influence of poets Oscar Wilde and Rainer Maria Rilke. Hammer points to Merrill's need to define his own masculinity as a gay man away from definitions partly imposed by his mother and father (who was a partner in the famous Merrill Lynch investment bank). Hammer's analysis of Merrill's work, such as The Seraglio (1957), reveals the poet's use of art to remove himself from restrictive hierarchies (real and imagined) he felt put upon him by his family. Hammer collects examples from and elegantly reveals Merrill's life in his art and vice versa--the book is well organized along these chronological lines throughout. VERDICT While certainly organized for readers who adore biographies and life dramas, this will strongly appeal to those who love to discover where art springs from life. [See Prepub Alert, 10/5/14.]--Jesse A. Lambertson, Metamedia Management, LLC, Washington, DC
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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November 1, 2014
Numerous, mostly academic studies explore the poetry of the late James Merrill, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honors. But Hammer, chair of the English Department at Yale and the poetry editor of the American Scholar, gives Merrill his first big, accessible biography.
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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