A Scattering Of Salts

by James Merrill

The tragic death of James Merrill in February 1995 coincided with the publication in hardcover of this, his last book of poems. "In these last poems, lucid, deft, fond, shrewd, faithful, Merrill once again reveals himself as our most visual poet, combining a superb eye with an unfailing ear."--Peter Davison, Boston Globe.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

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

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Think twice before causing
Just anything to be."
A friend? An enemy? A bad day? A lover? A child? Anything, I think. This volume, published posthumously, offers haunting beauty. There is a sort of stage play/story/poem here entitled "Nine Lives" which rivals Joyce's "Ulysses," but is certainly more accessible (and much shorter). "A Scattering of Salts" is the most diverse work I've read by James Merrill. And it concludes with an astonishing work entitled, exquisitely, "An Upward Look."

[Andy Oram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merrill was certainly magnificent at the English language. I was not able to fully engage with these poems because of his flippancy. Sure, I like poets who deal with current issues and the spirit of the times, but I felt the power of Merrill's imagery was weakened by casual wisecracks. He could often be serious, but all too often he seemed to show that he didn't really care, or that he cared more about his own cleverness than about the issue he was critiquing. I was particularly repelled by how he trivialized what most observers cite as the greatest achievement of Western culture: Wagner's Ring Cycle. Merrill must have known of its hallowed status and deliberately decided to use it for superficial observations on status and social issues. I can't respect a poet who doesn't respect others.

[Tristan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Merrill is just too darn urbane. The book was good; in some ways I really liked it--poems were well constructed and interesting, but at the same time there was a . . . flatness? to the poems that made them less than I wanted them to be. The verse in this collection is all gloss, no sparkle. Some of the poems even seem to border of vapid--I don't really think they are since I think Merrill is probably saying something about the social inclination towards such things in seeming empty, but such commentary is in a different sort of way surface all the way down.

As I've mentioned in reviews of some of Merrill's other work, he doesn't seem to really have missteps; instead the only flaw is a vague sense of enervation because it becomes tiresome to insist that all there is is surface, even when the surface is itself the serious and important things--the dealing with alcoholism in "Family Week at Oracle Ranch" or the intimacies of life with another person in "Cosmo" and "My Father's Irish Setters", for example. I loved several poems: "Novelettes," the ones I just mentioned, "Overdue Pilgrimage to Nova Scotia" (one of the few where I felt like there was an animating soul behind the poem, be it human or inhuman, relateable or alien). Conversely some poems, like "Morning Exercise" seemed to be utterly unimportant, elevated only by the remarkable style which flattens drama and spotlights the mundane in beauty.

There are moments of perfect wit--in "Cosmo" the dog is addressed at one point "We want you to grow up to be All Dog / they way they wanted me All Boy. My mother at least / seems reconciled", a funny and heartwrenching moment from a man in 1995 who could look back on his early adulthood as a gay man in the 1950s. And there is real love-- "Overdue Pilgrimage" brims with it, as does "Alessio and the Zinnias" or "Tony: Ending the Life". There were even real moments of wonder: "Novelettes" and its beautiful ending in the wilderness of something, though I don't quite know what: "I hear him / Piping, trying to reach me. And wake unafraid. He will." The best poems were amazing, but it felt like they made up so little of the book and the rest was this undifferentiated and vaguely vacant mass of shiny urbanity that made it difficult to focus on the poems that I did really enjoy.

Merrill knows what he's doing and I have no doubts about the intentionality of every effect the book had, but I think in order to enjoy him more I might need more guidance through his work, since as it stands I find myself seeing a lot in a few poems and very little in a lot of them.

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a jm poem when I was 19 that moved me so deeply, and I can’t remember the name of it. Every other poem, including the ones in this book, are clearly incredibly crafted. I just don’t get it yet. It seems too finely composed, too balanced, too polished, for me to find the rough divots and cracks that would allow me to grab on and climb to where the speaker is. I feel like I’ll read all these poems when I’m 45 and they’ll take the top of my head off.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hadn’t read anything by Merrill before but I have to say I can see why he was an award winning poet. At first there wasn’t a lot that I connected to but the later sections of the collection had really strong and moving poems

[Kevin S · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Simulacra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before posting this I read his other poems from more favored collections. Much better stuff, tastefully subdued and not nearly as laboriously ambiguous. Again, it could be a matter of fatigue, but I don't connect to anything written in this collection.

[Holly Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merrill's last book, not my favorite of his but I have to adore his stoic good humor and elegance in the face of illness and death. I'm going to forgo glibness and admit that as much as any philosopher Merrill provides an example of how to live.

[R S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Explores death, Greece, stones & jewels, volcanoes, medicine, evolution / change / metamorphosis & more. Delicate, heartfelt, touching & funny yet deeply sad. Excited to eventually explore the poetry James Merrill wrote during Ouija explorations.

[Jules Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

read it in college... the theme was final published books by various 20th century authors.