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Braving the Elements
Extremely rare,very good
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
32 people want to read
About the author
James Merrill
121 books66 followersJames 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.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 3, 2011
I chose this as my January book choice for my Poetry x 12, which was to read a poetry collection published in the year of your birth (1972). It was actually quite a challenge to find one published in that year, because so many are out of print or have been compiled into a collected or selected edition of the author's work. Additionally, I was trying to find one I could get from a Chicago area library, because I didn't want to pay extra for some collector edition. After several attempts to find something a library somewhere in the area would lend me, I finally settled on this one.
This is not a book that I normally would have selected to read, which made it interesting to me to read for this challenge. I've probably read something by James Merrill before, but I don't think I've read an entire book. His lyric poetry is quite lovely, and his more narrative poems are interesting as well. It has been a while since I have read a collection that uses rhyme as much as he does. In some of his poems, I found myself wishing that he had used meter or at least counted his syllables, because his lines seemed ragged and uneven to me. Some of the rhymes seemed forced occasionally, but towards the second half of the collection, the poems seemed stronger and many of the rhymes that came up were occasional or near-rhymes, which were pleasant surprises.
At first, I found his language florid and overly dramatic, but the more I read of him, the easier it was to adapt to the sound. Still, many of the lines I liked the most were the ones where he was most conversational, that had an ease to them. "Days of 1935" struck me as interesting as well, in that he wrote it about events 37 years prior to him, and I was reading it 38 years after it was published. I hear the magic in his language, the way the poems sound like the time they were published. It helps me see a picture of the progression of poetry, filling in gaps with books that influenced those that came after and were influenced by those which came before.
This is not a book that I normally would have selected to read, which made it interesting to me to read for this challenge. I've probably read something by James Merrill before, but I don't think I've read an entire book. His lyric poetry is quite lovely, and his more narrative poems are interesting as well. It has been a while since I have read a collection that uses rhyme as much as he does. In some of his poems, I found myself wishing that he had used meter or at least counted his syllables, because his lines seemed ragged and uneven to me. Some of the rhymes seemed forced occasionally, but towards the second half of the collection, the poems seemed stronger and many of the rhymes that came up were occasional or near-rhymes, which were pleasant surprises.
At first, I found his language florid and overly dramatic, but the more I read of him, the easier it was to adapt to the sound. Still, many of the lines I liked the most were the ones where he was most conversational, that had an ease to them. "Days of 1935" struck me as interesting as well, in that he wrote it about events 37 years prior to him, and I was reading it 38 years after it was published. I hear the magic in his language, the way the poems sound like the time they were published. It helps me see a picture of the progression of poetry, filling in gaps with books that influenced those that came after and were influenced by those which came before.
January 22, 2022
Then when the flame forked like a sudden path
I gasped and stumbled, and was less.
Density pulsing upward, gauze of ash,
Dear light along the way to nothingness,
What could be made of you but light, and this?
* * *
The panes flash, tremble with your ghostly passage
Through them, an x-ray sheerness billowing, and I have risen
But cannot speak, remembering only that one was meant
To rise and not to speak. Young storm, this house is yours.
Let your eye darken, your rain come, the candle reeling
Deep in what still reflects control itself and me.
Daybreak's great gray rust-veined irises humble and proud
Along your path will have laid their foreheads in the dust.
* * *
Cricket earphones fail us not
Here in the season of receptions
One prism drips ammonia still
Penknife-pearl-and-steel ripples
Paring nobody's orchard to the bone
Cut both was the pond believes
And boulders' heavy sighs appear
Out of mown meadows and inside a head
Laid on the block out half erase
Chiefly to yourself antagonist
Our light fantastic fills the barn
Turning the Model A's stripped body gold
Turning it nightfall nothing space
Become emotion ball in full career
Frog-footmen croak those highnesses
Of empty sleeve and battle star
Who wither at a glance us gentlefolk
Though such as we have made them what they are
* * *
Windowglass, warmed plush, a sneeze
Deflected by the miracle
Into euphoria's
Authoritative gliding forth,
The riddle of the rails
Vitally unmoved in flight
However fast
I run racing that arrow
Lodged in my brain
Down the board platform beyond hurt or hope
Once more, once more
My life ended, having not,
Veils lifted, words from the page
Come to my senses
Eased of that last arrivederci deep
In book or view, my own
Fleet profile calmer catapulted due
North a pane floats off, desire sinks
Red upon piercing stubble - "Traveller,
Turn back!" the tracks
Outcry, din flash fade, done,
Over forever, done I say, now yet
Might somebody
Seeing it all (for once not I or I)
Judge us wisely in whose heart of
Hearts the parallels
Meet and nothing lasts and nothing ends.
* * *
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,
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 judgement, it would seem, he was refrained.
He even listens earnestly to Bloch,
Then builds a church upon our acid rock.
He's man - no - he's the Leiermann's best friend,
Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.
Does he hear? I fancy he rather smells
Those lemon-gold areggios in Ravel's
'Les jets d'eau du palais de ceux qui s'aiment.'
He ponders the Schumann Concerto's tall willow hit
By lightning, and says put. When he surmises
Through one of Bach's eternal boxwood mazes
The oboe pungent as a bitch in heat,
Or when the calypso decant its raw bay rum
Or the moon in Wozzeck reddens ripe for murder,
He doesn't sneeze or howl; just listens harder.
Adamant needles bear down on him from
Whirling of outer space, too black, too near -
But he was taught as a puppy not to flinch,
Much less to imitate his bête noire Blanche
Who barked, fat foolish creature, at King Lear.
Still others fought in the road's filth over Jezebel,
Slavered on hearths of horned and pelted barons.
His forebears lacked, to say the least, forbearance.
Can nature change in him? Nothing's impossible.
The last chord fades. The night is cold and fine.
His master's voice rasps through the grooves' bare groves.
Obediently, in silence like the grave's
He sleeps there on the still-warm gramophone
Only to dream he is at the premiere of a Handel
Opera long thought lost - Il Cane Minore.
Its allegorical subject is his story!
A little dog revolving round a spindle
Gives rise to harmonies beyond belief,
A cast of stars.... Is there in Victor's heart
No honey for the vanquished? Art is art.
The life it asks of us is a dog's life.
I gasped and stumbled, and was less.
Density pulsing upward, gauze of ash,
Dear light along the way to nothingness,
What could be made of you but light, and this?
- Log, pg. 3
* * *
The panes flash, tremble with your ghostly passage
Through them, an x-ray sheerness billowing, and I have risen
But cannot speak, remembering only that one was meant
To rise and not to speak. Young storm, this house is yours.
Let your eye darken, your rain come, the candle reeling
Deep in what still reflects control itself and me.
Daybreak's great gray rust-veined irises humble and proud
Along your path will have laid their foreheads in the dust.
- Another April, pg. 29
* * *
Cricket earphones fail us not
Here in the season of receptions
One prism drips ammonia still
Penknife-pearl-and-steel ripples
Paring nobody's orchard to the bone
Cut both was the pond believes
And boulders' heavy sighs appear
Out of mown meadows and inside a head
Laid on the block out half erase
Chiefly to yourself antagonist
Our light fantastic fills the barn
Turning the Model A's stripped body gold
Turning it nightfall nothing space
Become emotion ball in full career
Frog-footmen croak those highnesses
Of empty sleeve and battle star
Who wither at a glance us gentlefolk
Though such as we have made them what they are
- Under Mars, pg. 40
* * *
Windowglass, warmed plush, a sneeze
Deflected by the miracle
Into euphoria's
Authoritative gliding forth,
The riddle of the rails
Vitally unmoved in flight
However fast
I run racing that arrow
Lodged in my brain
Down the board platform beyond hurt or hope
Once more, once more
My life ended, having not,
Veils lifted, words from the page
Come to my senses
Eased of that last arrivederci deep
In book or view, my own
Fleet profile calmer catapulted due
North a pane floats off, desire sinks
Red upon piercing stubble - "Traveller,
Turn back!" the tracks
Outcry, din flash fade, done,
Over forever, done I say, now yet
Might somebody
Seeing it all (for once not I or I)
Judge us wisely in whose heart of
Hearts the parallels
Meet and nothing lasts and nothing ends.
- Flèche d'Or, pg. 63
* * *
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,
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 judgement, it would seem, he was refrained.
He even listens earnestly to Bloch,
Then builds a church upon our acid rock.
He's man - no - he's the Leiermann's best friend,
Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.
Does he hear? I fancy he rather smells
Those lemon-gold areggios in Ravel's
'Les jets d'eau du palais de ceux qui s'aiment.'
He ponders the Schumann Concerto's tall willow hit
By lightning, and says put. When he surmises
Through one of Bach's eternal boxwood mazes
The oboe pungent as a bitch in heat,
Or when the calypso decant its raw bay rum
Or the moon in Wozzeck reddens ripe for murder,
He doesn't sneeze or howl; just listens harder.
Adamant needles bear down on him from
Whirling of outer space, too black, too near -
But he was taught as a puppy not to flinch,
Much less to imitate his bête noire Blanche
Who barked, fat foolish creature, at King Lear.
Still others fought in the road's filth over Jezebel,
Slavered on hearths of horned and pelted barons.
His forebears lacked, to say the least, forbearance.
Can nature change in him? Nothing's impossible.
The last chord fades. The night is cold and fine.
His master's voice rasps through the grooves' bare groves.
Obediently, in silence like the grave's
He sleeps there on the still-warm gramophone
Only to dream he is at the premiere of a Handel
Opera long thought lost - Il Cane Minore.
Its allegorical subject is his story!
A little dog revolving round a spindle
Gives rise to harmonies beyond belief,
A cast of stars.... Is there in Victor's heart
No honey for the vanquished? Art is art.
The life it asks of us is a dog's life.
- The Victor Dog, for Elizabeth Bishop, pg. 70-71
October 14, 2021
So I bought this book because I loved how it smell. Deep in its spine remains the smell of the trees that built these pages and made its words shine. There is also the sturdy cloth cover that delights my hands as I hold the book and take a whiff of what's inside.
James Merrill's reputation is that of a poet's poet. Someone who breathes poetry for breakfast, lunch and dinner, whose friends are all poets and all they talk about are poetics. These are just my exaggerated unsubstantiated projections.
I admire his rich, arresting use of language, his frankness of tone but ultimately I find his style cold and I'm not much moved by what he writes. Maybe that's why my chief joys in reading 'Braving the Elements' were olfactory.
James Merrill's reputation is that of a poet's poet. Someone who breathes poetry for breakfast, lunch and dinner, whose friends are all poets and all they talk about are poetics. These are just my exaggerated unsubstantiated projections.
I admire his rich, arresting use of language, his frankness of tone but ultimately I find his style cold and I'm not much moved by what he writes. Maybe that's why my chief joys in reading 'Braving the Elements' were olfactory.
May 22, 2025
One of those books you don’t exactly read but pass your eyes over all the words. Some of it sails relentlessly over your head. It’s very beautiful and well-crafted. Merrill (my amateur impression of him) had a lot of leisure time to study poetry, languages, amass a vocabulary. Why not? I like it. But right now I’m not in the mood for this amount of polish. The best thing in here was the long poem “Days of 1935” in which he fantasizes about being abducted as a boy by criminals for ransom. This was around the time of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Merrill turns it effortlessly into hilarious fun. I’ll have to read other books. Some of this was too refined for me.
July 12, 2012
I resisted Merrill for a long time, thanks to the whole 'major experimental poem dictated by spirits from the netherworld via a Ouija board' thing. Then a friend, whom I greatly respect, said (or at least implied) that I should read Merrill. Well, it took a while, but I got around to it. And my respected friend was right. Merrill's the perfect mix of experiment and form, feeling and intellect. I sometimes have no idea what he's talking about, but I know that the next poem will be comprehensible, witty, and beautiful. Particularly recommended: Days of 1971, Dreams about Clothes, After the Fire.
August 11, 2014
Who's a better 20th Century post-war poet than Merrill?
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews