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JAMES MERRILL
- Rutgers University Press
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196 JAMES MERRILL 1926–1995 Deftly witty, and brimming with gracious allusion and subtle wordplay, James Merrill’s poems often create a tone of rarified amusement that seems to glide above the fray of ordinary existence. Yet his poems nonetheless remain deeply immersed in the everyday details of contemporary experience, and they can turn from playful lightness or whimsical nostalgia to stark seriousness— and back again—with a dazzling swiftness and exactitude. Love and loss are persistent Merrill themes, and in his work the world offers a confounding paradox : it is full of attractions and tantalizing possibilities, yet one faces this world weighted down by the burdens of one’s past and by the limitations imposed by one’s individual character and one’s participation in the imperfections inherent in humanity. Merrill was born in New York City, where his father, Charles E. Merrill, enjoyed considerable power and prestige as a founding partner in the Merrill Lynch investment firm. He was raised in an environment of wealth and privilege , but when his parents separated when he was eleven, and later divorced, he suffered keenly, and a melancholic sense of distance or separation haunts much of his later work. Merrill attended Amherst College and, before graduation, published The Black Swan, the first of his many volumes of poetry. His early verse was predominantly lyric, but in 1976 he published Divine Comedies, the first volume in a personal epic, focusing on himself and his partner of four decades, the writer and artist David Jackson, and involving—rather surprisingly—a dialogue with a lively colloquy of departed spirits via the Ouija board. The second volume , Mirabell: Books of Number (1978), was followed by a final, comprehensive volume, The Changing Light of Sandover, in 1982. In his later years, Merrill’s poetry returned again to the lyric mode. He died of a heart attack due to complications from AIDS in 1995, having recently finished his last, valedictory volume of poems, A Scattering of Salts. Although he inherited great wealth from his financier father and from his mother, Hellen Ingram Merrill, he lived simply and devoted much of his income to the support of literature and the arts, particularly through the creation of the influential Ingram Merrill Foundation. Friendship with fellow artists is a frequent theme of his poetry, as can be seen in “The Victor Dog,” dedicated to his close friend, the poet Elizabeth Bishop (also included in this anthology). That poem also reveals Merrill’s fascination with the smorgasbord of ancient, modern, and contemporary culture—a feast that sometimes threatens to overwhelm the feaster—as does his “Self-Portrait in TyvekTM Windbreaker,” a late The Victor Dog Ø 197 1. Merrill’s updating of the traditional “Three B’s” (Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms) features jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke (1903–1931), baroque composer Dietrich Buxtehude (1637– 1707), and avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez (1925–). 2. Ernst Bloch (1880–1859), classical composer known for his somber, even earnest style. 3. A multilayered pun: Jesus said to his leading disciple, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18)—the word Peter (Petros) resembles rock (petra) in ancient Greek. Acid rock: a late-1960s rock music style featuring lyrics and musical effects suggestive of psychedelic experience. 4. Literally, “The Organ-Grinder.” A reference to “Der Leiermann,” the final song in Franz Schubert’s cycle Winterreise (1827). 5. Merrill playfully extends the title of Maurice Ravel’s shimmeringly impressionistic “Les Jeux d’Eau” (1901); Merrill’s version might be translated , “The Fountains of the Palace of Those Who Love Each Other.” poem that explores the irony of staking out a pro-ecology position by wearing a jacket so synthetic as to bear the trademark of a corporate chemical giant. The ironies of human circumstance—and the paradoxes of individual and collective fate—remain Merrill’s persistent preoccupations, and few poets have handled these with such lightness of touch or such gentle, yet penetrating, irony. further reading Rachel Hadas. Merrill, Cavafy, Poems, and Dreams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Timothy Materer. James Merrill’s Apocalypse. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. James Merrill. Selected Poems. Ed. J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser. New York: Knopf, 2008. The Victor Dog for Elizabeth Bishop Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,1 The little white dog on the Victor label Listens long and hard as he is able. It’s all in a day’s work, whatever plays. From judgment...