From the First Nine Poems, 1946-76

by James Merrill

Poems by the Pulitzer prizewinner examine mortality, nature, memory, myths, and the role of the artist.

Genres: Poetry

362 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

[Jesse Hilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for the beguilingly intricate rhyme schemes, although my eye often looked for them first to the detriment of the later absorption of the poems. Maybe on second reading you get the meaning and the first reading is more reserved for the form’s astonishments.

Merrill was extremely skilled at long poems, two that stand out to me here are “Days of 1935,” wherein he, as a young rich kid during the Great Depression, fantasizes about being abducted like the Lindbergh baby — it’s very clever and funny — and the well-known long poem “The Summer People” which is like a novel in verse, with characters and arcs and a gouging satirical and social thrust.

Merrill wrote highly polished poems where not a singles word seemed out of place or misjudged. It can get a little isolating at times (you wonder what space is left for humanity, for errors, for you) but ultimately I didn’t mind. It’s an education in poetry to read this selected volume. I love James Merrill. A lot of these poems seemed frankly autobiographical. I’d like to read his biography by Langdon Hammer but the dang thing is 900 pages or something monstrous like that!

[Gregory Knapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who's a better 20th Century post-war poet than Merrill?