The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

by James Merrill, J.D. McClatchy, Stephen Yenser

A welcome return to paperback: James Merrill’s most famous and celebrated work.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Classics, Epic, American, Literature, Fantasy

641 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

James Ingram Merrill was born on March 3, 1926, and died on February 6, 1995. From the mid-1950s on, he lived in Stonington, Connecticut, and for extended periods he also had houses in Athens and Key West. From The Black Swan (1946) through A Scattering of Salts (1995), he wrote twelve books of poems, ten of them published in trade editions, as well as The Changing Light at Sandover (1982). He also published two plays, The Immortal Husband (1956) and The Bait (1960); two novels, The Seraglio (1957, reissued in 1987) and The (Diblos) Notebook (1965, reissued 1994); a book of essays, interviews, and reviews, Recitative (1986); and a memoir, A Different Person (1993). Over the years, he was the winner of numerous awards for his poetry, including two National Book Awards, the Bollingen Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the first Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress. He was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

He didn’t cavil. He was the revelation.

The actual verse by Merrill appears almost removed if not secondary to the circumstances surrounding this bizarre project. Much of the framework, much of the actual content of these pages was revealed by decades of seances and the use of an improvised Ouija board. A cringe overtakes with that acknowledgment. I’m fortunate to have never been overly concerned with the idea of testimony and the possibility of revealed truth. I might be deficient but eschatology is exactly that, a parlor game. I don’t see how it matters whether Merrill and his partner encountered these transcriptions or if they believed such.

What is provided in this epic poem is interesting whether it portends an astral plane or not. The better parts remind me of Alan Moore’s Jerusalem. The worst are a nudging pipe dream: wouldn’t it be cool if Auden spoke to Dickinson? How catty would that be? There is a resonating filigree to matters, perhaps an overly fawning view of furniture and post code. This is certainly worth one’s time, especially given the mimesis, using Auden with ventriloquist verve is daunting but by that metric alone, The Changing Light is a success.

[Laura Leaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I liked about this incredible epic poem is not so much the premise (James Merrill and his real-life lover hovering over a "milk glass tabletop" using a Willoware teacup for a Ouji Board pointer as they commune with spirits in a "shoebox of a parlor") but the spectacular language and phrasing. The most gorgeous words and phrases are imbedded into a piece that is basically domestic in nature.

For instance:

"Oh very well, then. Let us broach the matter
Of the new wallpaper in Stonington.
Readers in small towns will know the world
Of interest rippling out from such a topic,
Know by their own case that "small town" is
Largely a state of mind, a medium
Wherein suspended, microscopic figments
--Boredom, malice, curiosity--
Catch a steadily more revealing light."

This exhibits something of the paradox; the poem is both epically large and household small, which makes for a rich reading experience. The moods and tones evoked are lovely: "It starts in the small hours. An interlude / Out of Rossini. Strings in sullen mood / Manage by veiled threats, to recruit a low / Pressure drum and lightning piccolo."

I didn't kill myself trying to understand every line, but read this with lax pleasure, soaking up the beauty of the writing.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

REMEMBER THIS IS NON-FICTION

The transcripts from the Ouija sessions are in special collections at Washington University in Saint Louis

[Amira Hanafi]

blah blah blah
my furniture

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am no where near smart enough for this thing, but it's so beautiful.

[Molly Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you're looking for a book-length poem, in formal verse, written with the aid of a ouija board...I recommend this one!

[?0?0?0 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does this ever get old?

[H]

"frontier austerities..."

from Mirabell:

How should you speak? Speak without metaphor.
Help me to drown the double-entry book
I've kept these fifty years. You want from me
Science at last, instead of tapestry--
Then tell round what brass tacks the old silk frays.
-1.6

As every unloved child would like to think,
We're after all these grown-ups' only link
With life. And they ours--whose post-mortems keep
Us from if not the devil then the deep
Blue silences which D and I might tend
Dully to sink into, at lesson's end.
-2.3

Maman, why so secretive? I PREFERRED
EFFECTS UNSTUDIED INDEED SCARCELY HEARD
AS ONCE WHEN 3 COINCIDENTAL SOUNDS
A WIND BELL IN THE GARDEN A DOOR CHIME
& THE HIGH CRY OF A SEAGULL MADE ONE FLEETING
TONIC CHORD IS NOT MUSIC LIKE TIME
RETOLD? LIKE THE NO ACCIDENT MOTIF
A WAY OF TELLING THAT INSPIRES BELIEF?
-6.1

MAN PLAYS A TUNE IN COLORS THE VIBRATIONS OF MUSIC
LIGHT UP MACHINES. SIMPLER YET, WRITE 'AZURE' & THE LANGUAGE-
CONDUCTING BRAIN IS FLOODED WITH A TONE OF SUMMER SKIES.
THE PAINTER'S PIGMENTS ARE BLANKLY SEEN THEY CONTAIN NO LIGHT.
ARE NOT PAINTINGS BLANK IN A DARK ROOM? & EVEN THE LIVE
WHITE LIGHT SHED UPON THEM APPEARS BUT TO DIM THEM FURTHER
-6.6

AS FOR (M) HELL, IT IS HERE IS BOUNDLESS YET ITS VERSIONS
IN HOMER & DANTE WERE NEEDED (UNDERGROUND SHELTERS
FROM LIGHT) BY DULL ANIMALISTIC LIVES FOR WHOM TRUTH TOO
STRONGLY SHONE. THE ENLIGHTENED ARE JUST THAT: FREE OF THE HELLS
THAT ON EARTH DAMN ALL OF U AT MOMENTS SOME FLEETINGLY
OTHERS INCESSANTLY. DOUBT IS YR HELL JM AS YOURS
DJ IS FEAR. HELL IS THE CAVE OF PSYCHE & HARKS BACK . . .
. . . THIS WAS THE FIRST HELL:
TO KNOW THAT EVEN IN EDEN WAS DANGER
-9.4


from Scripts for the Pageant

FOR INNOCENCE IS OUR NATURE
AND WE INNOCENTLY THINK IT FOR THE BEST.
WE COME MUCH AS FLOWERS CUT FROM THE STEM BELIEVE
IN THE BLOOM TO FOLLOW.
-Yes.L3

AH THE MACHINE, SENIOR POET, THE MACHINE, YOUNG SCRIBE, THE MACHINE OF THE MIND DRIVEN BY WORDS TO MINE MEANING:
MAKE SENSE OF IT
-Y.L6

TOO SIMPLIFIED, BUT THESE
WERE MERELY PSYCHES, PERSONALITIES,
THE UPPER CRUST OF A MILLEFEUILLES LAYER BY LAYER,
HABITS & LOVES & LIFETIMES, PEELED AWAY
FROM EPIDERMS OF HUMAN MEMORY
-Y.L9

Out of the blue propounds that it takes all
One's skill and patience to describe, oh, say
A chair without alluding to its use.
No words like "seat" or "arm-rest"--just deduce
As best one can the abstract entity.
The mind on hunkers, squinting not to see,
Gives up.
-&.L4

DOCTOR, SURELY YOU RECALL THE FIRST LAW OF PHYSICS: MOTION KNOWS ONLY RESISTANCE?
. . . FOR IN DUALITY IS DIMENSION, TENSION, ALL THE TRUE GRANDEUR WANTING IN A PERFECT THING.
. . . DEATH IS THAT RESISTANT FORCE DEFINING THE FORWARD MOTION OF LIFE.
-&.L5

Does thought destroy ideas?
WHAT ELSE? Well, our faith came to be in Feeling.
Feelings for one another, love, trust, need,
Daily harrowing the mini-hells
They breed-- DON'T TALK TO YR MAMAN OF FEELINGS
TOO FEW WERE STARS TOO MANY WERE BLACK HOLES
. . . JM: Why born? To feed the earthward flow
Of Paradise?
-&.Last Word on Number

Strange how the energies of the Five so far
Resist exhaustion. THEY ARE OF THE LAB
ENFANTS, & MOVE TOO GLADLY FROM LIFE TO LIFE
TO HARDEN INTO IDOLS. NO IVORY
EINSTEINS OR MOZARTS ON A CRUCIFIX.
NEITHER MUST THEY RECRUIT BY JUGGLERS' TRICKS
VAST FOLLOWINGS FROM THE BUREAUCRACY
-No.L2

AND NOW AS MAN MULTIPLIES, GETS CLEVERER WITH HIS TOOLS, CONTRIVING NEARLY PERFECT SUBSTITUTES FOR GOD'S NATURAL POWERS,
GOD NEEDS MORE (& MORE COMPLEX) CONTACT WITH HIS CHILD, THAT EACH MAY KNOW THE OTHER'S GOOD WILL.
-N.L6

'. . . YES, MAN ALONE
MUST UNDERSTAND THAT VANISHED MARBLE TREAD
GIVES WAY IN TIME TO THE STEEP & SOLITARY
PATH OF MIND'
-N.Sermon at Ephesus


from Coda

STRANGE: 'PERSONALITY' I SHOULD
HAVE THOUGHT THE CALLUS OF THE SOUL. NOT TRUE.
A CERTAIN STRIDENCY MAY BE OUTGROWN
SAY IN LISZT, BUT HIS ESSENTIAL HOKUM
& GALLANTRY & ALL THE REST WD SEEM
A CORE IMPERVIOUS TO THE PUMICE STONE . . .
MM ALONE WAS TOTALLY HERSELF,
MIND ONE WITH MATTER. YET SHE 'HAD A STYLE'
& WAS IT REAL? THE INDIVIDUAL STYLE
OF A PARTICULAR PERSON? WHO CAN SAY?
IT WAS I THINK HER GENIUS THAT ALLOWED
SPACE TO SURROUND HER IN WHATEVER CROWD,
A CAM EXTERIOR UPHELD, DEFINED
NEVER PREDICTABLY, BY HER THINKING MIND
-About Maria

[Amy]

Richard Kenney suggested that I might get a kick out of this book, given my penchant for writing tarot card sonnets.

*****

"The Changing Light at Sandover" is a 560-page epic poem, which was published in three separate installments between 1976 and 1980, and in its entirety in 1982.

With his partner David Jackson, Merrill spent more than 20 years transcribing supernatural communications during séances using a ouija board. Already established in the 1970s among the finest poets of his generation, Merrill made a surprising detour when he began incorporating occult messages into his work. In 1976, Merrill published his first ouija board narrative cycle, with a poem for each of the letters A through Z, calling it "The Book of Ephraim".

In 1976 Merrill believed he had exhausted the inspiration provided by the ouija board. The supernatural spirits thought otherwise, however, ordering Merrill to write and publish further installments, "Mirabell: Books of Number" in 1978 (which received the National Book Award for Poetry in 1979) followed by "Scripts for the Pageant" in 1980. The complete three-volume work, with a brief additional coda, appeared as "The Changing Light at Sandover" in 1982.

In live readings, Merrill was able to impersonate the narrating voices of (deceased) poet W.H. Auden and late friends Maya Deren and Maria Mitsotáki, as well as otherworldly spirits including Ephraim and Mirabell (a ouija board guide, initially described as a bat, who is transformed into a peacock).

****

Told you he's weirder than Robert Frost!

[Donald Krieger · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Merrill is one of the best poets of the late 20th century. He moved to a small town on the Maine coast and began to use the ouija board in his parlor overlooking the sea, spurred on by his boyfriend. The hobby soon became an obsession and this is the epic result-a book, supposedly dictated by disembodied spirits. Merrills sense of structure and poetic imagery hold it all together, as their personal world disintegrates...lost in the eythers.

[Luca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I slammed into a wall in the middle of this, and kind of gave up on it. I get more out of Merrill's shorter work, without the sci-fi aspects of The Changing Light. Not that I'm particularly qualified to evaluate this magnum opus.

[Crito · Rating 5 out of 5]

On strength of its impeccable language and atmosphere alone, The Changing Light at Sandover is worthy of all sorts of praise. Nowhere within this big, complex, ever morphing poem is there a word that doesn’t belong. The presence of the words alone allude to something deeper, because by this book’s premise there’s already a big question within it. The premise is that a good chunk of what’s in here, indicated by caps, are transcripts from communicating with actual spirits via ouijia. Transcripts there are, we know Merrill did this but to what extent Merrill is taking poetic license with it is sort of a mystery that coincides with how the spirits string along James and David, playfully feeding them bits about the metaphysical structure of the spirit world that may be misleading or misinformed, to be pieced together in retrospect.
It’s almost surprising how there’s this huge detailed cosmology mapped out in this, it’s something you would expect from genre fiction with details such as an early race of centaurs ruling the fated Atlantis, or the idea that the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki annihilated the souls of those who died there. Some of this sometimes feels straight out the mouth of a conspiracy obsessed shroom fiend crossed with Dante and Milton, but above all else in I’d say it feels in atmosphere like the abstract ethereal ending of The Man Who Was Thursday drawn out to hundreds of pages, with a slow gradual buildup.
But I think what really boated my float is the role of the artist in all this. From the structure of The Bureaucracy, the three traditionally separate entities of science, art, and the spiritual/metaphysical mingle completely. In plain life we might think back on those that influenced us, great writers or artists, and think of them as subtly guiding our pen. In The Changing Light at Sandover, these figures are literally speaking through us, from lines of spiritual influence and reincarnations. And it doesn’t stop there, as obviously through the whole thing they are using James and David as their scribes, to bring their words to paper when they lack the body to do it. And the choice of artists illustrate this even further, for example they speak to the spirit of Alice B Toklas who famously “wrote” an autobiography that was of course actually penned by Gertrude Stein. Another figure of central importance in the poem is Plato and he of course never exposed himself much in his dialogues, instead making characters of his peers to illustrate his points from behind a curtain. This brought me back to when I read The Republic and awed at its ripples of influence.
I can’t help but feel I’m still describing the poem at face value, that I’ve barely scratched the surface of its thick layers, despite having already written quite a bit. It is dense, and its ornate use of language can sometimes be too much. But it’s also the use of language that is the poem’s strongest hook. And it’s through some miracle of fontwork that the long stretches of spirit dialogue in all caps somehow didn’t detract from its physical readability at all. Additionally neat is the little bonus in the appendix, “Voices From Sandover” which is a short play adaptation of the poem, which is interesting to see how Merrill himself frames it in a 60 page window. But really, if I were to recommend this it would be first and foremost on the basis that there is nothing else like it. It has created for itself a necessary space, and just as I enjoyed spending more time than usual on it, I’ll enjoy it when I’ll inevitably come back to its designated space on my shelf.

[Christopherseelie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have little love for epic poetry as a form but this book has converted me. James Merrill and his life-partner David Jackson spent decades at the Ouija board (a kind of side-life parallel to their socializing, home-making, and travels) contacting spirits and engaging in an occult odyssey through the levels of ethereal hierarchy.
Merrill happened to be a formalist poet in an age when formalism had waned but his gifts are particularly well-suited to the materials presented by his contacts on "the other side". At times pretty, kooky, disturbing, and revolutionary, the lessons accumulate around anxieties mortal and atomic, relationships personal and professional (W.H. Auden features heavily), and yet the process is one of constant revision. The afterlife is crowded with fallibility, partisanship, and bias. Even the divine feminine principle might not be divulging her interests with candor.
The Changing Light at Sandover contains a multitude of voices, perspectives, and motives. It allows that "evil" may not be as separate from "good" as earlier epics have relied on. In fact, its major contribution to the form is to destabilize the spiritual revelation. In each book, what was once a revealed truth is later discarded or amended by a voice from higher up the chain of command. These are not errors but lesser understandings. The way forward is not settling into certainty but tempering for more transmission.
Formal innovations aside, taking this journey with Merrill and Jackson, and their friends on the other side, has lightened the twin burdens of mortality and meaning. Finality, fixity, are not the comforts they purport to be. And while many would think the hierarchical, socially complex, shaded afterlife of Changing Light to be hellish, it is less oppressive than the schema of other systems whether derived from monotheisms, Dante, Milton, or Yeats.

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Admittedly, Merrill is not for everyone. His poetry is dense, cyclical, scientific, and at times deliberately aloof. Yet, this post-modern epic poem deserves to be placed alongside T.S. Elliot's "The Wasteland" as one of the great long poems of the 20th century. A poem in the form of a Ouija board, a horde of deceased characters being channeled through Merrill's partnership with his lover, and fittingly dense ruminations on metaphysical concepts makes this daunting poem worth the read and the revelations it can bring.

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many voluminous verse cosmologies, so little time. I've read the first section, 'The Book of Ephraim'; but have no such foothold in The Cantos, or in The Divine Comedy.

[James Sager]

orphic

[Eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this originally back in the 1980s and it inspired various pieces of music I wrote in those days: I felt it was sort of a 20th century answer to Dante, and absolutely loved it. I pulled it out the other day because one of those old pieces of mine is being resurrected for performance this spring, and it's like re-visiting a lost world, one that had far-reaching impact on my life. It's deeply queer, and simultaneously optimistic and desolate ... a domestic love story used to express an immensely imaginative and ambitious cosmology. Simultaneously camp and utterly heartfelt, there's a core of loneliness to the vision that 35 years later kind of breaks my heart: the God of this universe is Biology, who is directly experienced only through Morse-code-like signals indicating that it does indeed survive, and is looking for confirmation that it is not alone.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gripping and absorbing, a novel in verse. Extraordinarily imaginative. Tour de force stuff all the way. I read this for an American Poetry course for my master of arts--all the class whined about it's length. I read it in a sitting, could not put it down, and then wrote my final paper on it. (Whoopty-doo!). The point is that it is highly rewarding, and part of the brilliance of it is that it comes off entirely real--and therefore just a little creepy.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate more than love Merrill's attempt at a modern fusion of Dante and Yeats' Mythologies. The lines are amazingly fluid, given the length of the poem, and the invitation to speculation is clear. Finally, though--and I'd say the same about the Yeats (though not Dante)--I simply couldn't commit as deeply as the poem requires. I get the ouija board as conceit, but it points inward with only refractions of the surrounding world of the times of its composition, from the 60s to the 80s.

[Josh Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Merrill wrote these poems using a ouija board to communicate with the dead. Needless to say, it makes for a strange epic poem. It was certainly ambitious and fascinating, but I prefer Merrill's shorter lyric poems.

[atito · Rating 3 out of 5]

what can one say... it's hard to resist the charm, but it's hard to *make* anything of it too. if anything, i always knew poets had plants in their souls (though again, i don't believe in poets--but i do wholeheartedly in flora)

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second time through this epic poem. first read in early 1980's.

[Jason Zuzga · Rating 5 out of 5]

God Biology warns of the destruction of all...this is an epic of science, told through the mystic channeling of spirits through the ouija board.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gasping for air upon completion. Brutal in its density and complexity, masterful in its language, a poem like no other.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Speechless. Must re read throughout my life again and again. A dazzling perfect pyramid which you must excuse me for having been a little blinded by.

[Devenir Montoya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantasía. Saber que está escrito a partir de sesiones espiritistas a través de la ouija.

[Phil Brown]

Wears out its welcome. Would've been better if he had left off after Ephraim instead of writing 400 more pages.

[Wesley]

Not for me? Can’t see myself revisiting this

[Roberto Planos · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite poem of all time.

[Richard Porter · Rating 2 out of 5]

odd and long

odd and long. The play at the end helps summarize what precedes. To borrow from Dr Johnson, none would wish it longer