Y? Y so long in the crossroads? Y this hesitation? Y can you see and see but never quite the right way say? Y is it thus, always just out of reach? & then again, Y not? & yes, I’ve struggled to begin this last saying. What stone is left unturned? What would sum up … Continue reading Y
X
X & O, Yes & No, Yin & Yang. Merrill’s poetry is not only full of dualities, but also full of the gulfs—represented by the mobius strip of the ampersand—between each of these oppositional pairs: love & loss, life & death, this world & the next; or mother & father, femininity & masculinity, space & … Continue reading X
W
‘I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.‘ “I liked white better,” I said.‘ “White!” he sneered. “It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. … Continue reading W
V
[Many thanks to Lauren Chavez for this guest post!] Very rarely do I allow myself to be swallowed by the overwhelming emotions that stir within my chest when I read poetry. I’ve never enjoyed strong displays of emotion from myself, especially in front of other people. Merrill, however, does not allow me to hide from … Continue reading V
U
Unreal City. Rosy used to say that New York is a fairground. “You will know when it’s time, when the fair is over.” —Hannah Sullivan’s “You, Very Young in New York” Back to the ever-curt and oft respectful transactions of New York City delis, markets, and bodegas—the equivalent of the steering wheel finger-lift on rural … Continue reading U
T
Turn the screw once more—see how far in it digs before the threads lose grip and the whole assemblage rips itself up by its own penetrative power. “Screw your courage to the sticking place”—that kind of thing. Three months ago, in August, I most recently tried to write this essay. I only got this: There … Continue reading T
S
So, the bizarreries of Mirabell and Scripts, their sometimes beautiful poetry, their sometimes agonizing poetry, their sometimes not-even-poetry; the fact that Merrill succumbed to New Age thinking even in the act of trying to bypass or circumvent it, and that poetry didn’t, in the end, provide any kind of guaranteed immunity from it: a certain … Continue reading S
R
Reading Merrill again these days is like coming back to your childhood house as an adult. To all appearances, things are not really changed—the walls and ceilings and windows remain as they were. Perhaps even (let’s imagine) there was no one else at home while you were away, so all the decor and so forth … Continue reading R
Q
Quarantine. Self-imposed isolation. Today’s terms apply to yesterday’s poets. How to occupy oneself when stuck at home all day? Pull out the Ouija board, have a small party with non-corporeal and therefore non-infectious guests. While away the hours in conversation. Cardboard, Sharpie, teacup. Batteries not required, screens not involved. Pen and paper will do. Zoom … Continue reading Q
P
Pillows of snow have come down, the first real snowfall of the winter, a heavy, wet flatness over everything in sight. It sags beneath its own weight: an icicle I plunged like a flag into the railing’s drifts now leans at a crazy angle over empty space, pulled almost to a horizontal by the slow … Continue reading P
O
[Many thanks to Erika Birkeland for this guest post!] On September 20, 2019, 16-year-old activist Greta Thurnburg declared in an Instagram post: “Change is coming, whether you like it or not” (“Greta”). While poet James Merrill could not have foreseen the rise of Instagram or the global climate strikes that prompted this post, in 1991 … Continue reading O
N
November has turned into December. Keegan and I each have multiple small roles in a dramatic adaptation of A Christmas Carol. We are phantoms of the past and people of the present. Ebenezer Scrooge first threatens us, then showers us with munificence. I haven’t been in a play in decades. It’s intimidating to share the … Continue reading N
M
M: mid-point, center, middle of the line. Halfway through the alphabet. I can only think of something my dad once told me: Once you’re halfway into the forest, the quickest way out is forward. — Months have gone by, and for those months those lines sat on my desk, were typed up, were shuffled here … Continue reading M
L
Life keeps hitting the stands. Having spent the weekend in Boston, I’m now in the small town of Stonington, CT, five miles east of Mystic and just west of the Rhode Island border, on a small peninsula that gestures towards the Block and Long Island Sounds, staying in an Airbnb just around the corner from … Continue reading L
K
Killing time is more difficult than one might imagine, perhaps not because of the imagined final authority we have ordained it with, not because of its assumed position preexisting and outlasting humanity, and indeed all creation – on the contrary, perhaps it is that time is nothing but a fabric, sheer artifice woven of words, … Continue reading K
J
Jazz on too loud—A Love Supreme. The library is quiet in the edges of my vision—all is rolling cymbal, a haze of notes from Coltrane’s saxophone, and then an insistent, driving bass which is overtaken by piano; a rolling horn line like a snake. People move quietly about, but they are as distant as a … Continue reading J
I
Imagine with me, for one moment, a brilliant “SAPPHIRE BREAST[ED]” cosmic peacock with a “SPREAD TAIL” and “EYES BURN[ING] RED / IN [A] FEATHERED MASK.” Imagine now, a peacock of equal beauty and celestial mystique, but in white with charcoal ocelli. The white peacock, reminding me, rather obviously, of a D.H. Lawrence novel title, appeared … Continue reading I
H
Here and now I sit, and never truly can. My mind is awash with contemplations of where I have been, what I have been through, and the many trials of the future that I must yet wade in, unfurling before me like Hydra’s heads. It is not my story alone, but all of ours, and … Continue reading H
G
Ghosts in dim light—me and the cat. The heating is out, and my roommates are either abroad or ensconced in the warm houses and arms of their partners. The curtains on this northern side of the house are closed in a meager attempt to hold heat. I, in full thermals and boots, clomp restlessly from … Continue reading G
F
Frederick Buechner, a prep-school classmate, gifted Merrill his first Ouija board in 1952, one year after First Poems was published. Timothy Materer, author of James Merrill’s Apocalypse, suggests that “Merrill’s friend found a backdoor way to encourage the poet’s spiritual interests” (81), but, reflecting on Merrill’s earlier work, it becomes apparent that this motif had … Continue reading F
E
Every reader of James Merrill’s poetry is a detective by another name. Frequently, accessing the meanings of Merrill’s poems requires the exercise of the science of deduction, or good close reading, the two being not dissimilar from one another. There will be regular “Eureka!” and “Aha!” moments for the patient reader, as a connection is … Continue reading E
D
"Beacon in a Dark Fog" by Adam Strauss Deep haze and dreamscapes penetrate my waking-states, almost daily. It’s been about a year since I “quit” drinking; I would have expected more clarity. Then again, I still have a cocktail once every month or so. Still, I never would have expected (relative) sobriety to be a … Continue reading D
C
Cold nights. Some storm’s come whirling down from Canada, and Bozeman’s streets are pale and clear—a skiff of snow over white ice. The wind is bitter, raw, and hollowly cold, fringed with humid frost. I’ve been stuck inside all day. Merrill’s Fire Screen is open next to me—mocking me, I suddenly think. His face peers … Continue reading C
B
Before sunrise on an unspecific day last week, I was asked by one of the three most important women in my life to give her a lift to work, seeing as her vehicle has been decommissioned for nearly three months now. The morning began at 4:15 a.m., when I opened my eyes and saw the … Continue reading B
A
A selfie of Merrill and Friar at Amherst, from Langdon Hammer's James Merrill: Life and Art A black and white photo snapped in 1945 at Amherst College depicts the face of a man, dark hair receding, gaze appearing somewhat drowsy, the deep marks of time carried in crow’s feet parenthetically framing his mouth. Next to him a boy, lighter … Continue reading A
Four Mirrors 