Merrill: Poems: Edited by Langdon Hammer (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)

This collection really is of Merrill at his best, I find. His trilogy I think is overworked. I do prefer his shorter pieces.

An excellent collection of a great poets work in a very handy size. It’s attractively and sturdily made and just the right size.

Langdon Hammer, in his compilation of James Merrill’s work in the redoubtable collection of the Everyman Library, “Pocket Poets” series, says: “James Merrill is frequently viewed as a mandarin taste, a mid-twentieth century Mallarme. . . .”I get the Mallarme reference, but besides sounding marvelously exotic, what in the world is a “mandarin taste?”A simple Google search of the phrase, reveals no literary definition, but rather approximately 1,000 search results for Chinese restaurants! So, is Hammer saying that Merrill’s works are the literary equivalent of Chinese takeout, poems fit to be housed in white cardboard containers and purchasable on any street corner?Or, is a “mandarin taste” a reference to the eating of a tiny mandarin orange, those easily peel-able cousins of their more traditional nourishing, sticky juice-filled cousins? I like mandarin oranges, myself, but really prefer the original.What I gather is that a “mandarin taste” ought to be something plain, something bland, something to be purchased on any street corner.I disagree with Hammer—Merrill is anything but bland, ubiquitous, common as Chinese takeout, unsatisfying as a mandarin orange.I never entirely figured out the answer to this “mandarin” business, but after reading this little book, I did find some marvelously inventive poems that struck my fancy. One, “To a Butterfly,” turns convention on its ear and bemoans the fate of the caterpillar, a “simple poor creature,” who’s:. . . slender person curledAbout an apple twig,Rebounding to the wind’s clear jig,Gave up the worldIn favor of gray matter. . .Shining awake to sloughYour old life. And soon fourDapper stained glass windows boreYou up—Enough!The “stained glass window” reference is fascinating, as it mark’s Merrill’s obvious ambivalence with and reaction against traditional religion. Scores of his poems echo this strong ambivalence and negative reaction, while embracing occult-like imagery. Merrill eschews religion, but apparently embraces an occult-like substitute. Langdon Hammer tells us, straight-faced, apparently with utter seriousness, that Merrill and his lover “discovered that they could use the Ouija board to communicate with the dead. . .”! And, it’s not merely Christianity that receives the bitter lash of Merrill’s skilled poetic whip, but Islam, as shown in his “Page from the Koran”:A small vellum environmentOverrun by blackScorpions of Kufic script—their ranksAll trigger tail and gold-vowel-sac. . . .Many of the poems reflect Merrill’s long medical decline and approaching death.I loved the miniature quality of the poems, like little cartouches or medallions.Since I already own 28 other volumes in Everyman Library’s “Pocket Poet” series, I must comment on the design of this new volume. One of the things I have loved about the series is the high artistry of the typography and creative design of the covers, which are uniform with each other but still proclaim the originality and essence of the individual poet, especially on the spines. So, for example, “Poems About Horses” has thundering steeds racing vertically up the spine; “Dickinson” has a long chevron of small, upward pointing lines seeming to break through a counter-running strata; “Christmas Poems” have intricately positioned wreaths of sharp-pointed holly; “On the Wings of Song” has a long vertical row of speckled birds eggs; etc., etc. But this new volume of Merrill’s poems has disappointingly—wait for it—a single, elongated letter M, seemingly in Calibri with a font setting of 96 or greater, and NOTHING ELSE. When I place the Merrill volume on my Pocket Poets shelf shoulder to shoulder with its more richly designed and uniquely portrayed cousins, Merrill looks kind of sad and forlorn, and, well . . . Mandarin!

James Merrill is someone I've really struggled with over the years. In many ways he has seemed to me to be a bit too precious and self-indulgent, a trust fund kid (his father was the Merrill of Merrill-Lynch) with too much time and money to struggle with real world problems. His poetry, while obviously the work of a man with extraordinary control over the language, at times seems impossibly personal, not about universal themes of art, but of what James Merrill experienced at this particular moment or that particular instance. Even in his greatest work, the epic THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER, co-written with his life-long partner David Jackson using a Ouija Board to talk to their deceased friends, I have no trouble understanding the lines, except what they are about. Merrill always seems to be referencing very specific moments in time that he and Jackson experienced with Maya Deren or W. H. Auden or any of the other individuals whose photos appear on the end-papers. I struggle with THE CHANGING LIGHT in a way that I don't struggle with David Jones's IN PARENTHESIS or ANATHEMATA or Hart Crane's THE BRIDGE or Williams's PATERSON or Louis Zukofsky's "A". Maybe as tough as Charles Olson's MAXIMUS POEMS. The problem I always have with Merrill is that he uses poetry, which is essentially a public medium, to talk about extraordinarily private moments, but not in a way to universalize those private moments. I always feel excluded from his poems, the polar opposite of Walt Whitman, who writes in a way to almost make me feel that he is articulating my own life.Yet I love reading Merrill, just as I love looking at a lovely vase in a museum. Nothing seems to eliminate the distance and I'm never overwhelmed by how much his life feels like mine, as with Whitman. His poems never seem to move from the particular to the universal and I rarely connect to his poems emotionally, but they are beautiful in a pure, abstract way.That said, there are better and worse ways into Merrill's poetry. I initially came to his poetry through anthologies, where I would read only a few of his poems. I then bought THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER, which I ground through despite enormous frustration that I didn't know what most of the sections were referring to. I feel the need for a good biography on Merrill as well as an annotated version of THE CHANGING LIGHT. I expect that we will eventually get a critical biography on Merrill (at the moment, unless I am mistaken, the closest we have is Alison Lurie's memoir of her friendship with Merrill and Jackson), but I doubt that we'll ever see an annotated version of Merrill's long poem. Perhaps a university press will publish a commentary on it. But the problem remains about the best way to begin reading Merrill's poetry. I've read a lot less in his COLLECTED POEMS because I always find him challenging because of the enormously private nature of his poems. But this Everyman's Library volume provides a great extended selection of Merrill's poems. It includes nothing from THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER, but reading this I have read more in his shorter poems than I ever have before. Merrill does not emerge as a less private or personal poet, but you get a marvelous group of poems to read. I suspect THE CHANGING LIGHT will be remembered as his greatest work, but it is a tough place to start reading Merrill. He is clearly one of America's greatest post-WW II poets and he deserves a wider readership. Hopefully this small volume will help introduce him to new readers.

This is a lovely little book. It's much smaller than the average book. Typically that would be a cause for concern for me, just in worrying about tiny print. Thankfully, the print isn't tiny(nor is it large).The outside of the book is covered by a dust jacket, but beneath it is a textured cloth cover. I much prefer the smooth dust jacket to touch, but the cloth cover is also lovely with black labels and gold lettering. There's also a ribbon bookmark to keep your place. The pages aren't super thick by any means, but they aren't the incredibly thin pages I would expect from a smaller sized book. They're comparable to an average book page.By appearance, this is just an elegant, yet simple little book, and such a treasure for those that enjoy poetry, particularly by Merrill.As far as the poetry goes, I can't say this is my favorite book of poems. My tastes are just different. Poetry is one of those things that I'm trying to work into my days more and more, and I'm learning about new poets and their styles regularly. I can't claim to be a fan of Merrill. For those that are, this is a lovely book, though.

Merrill is a very fine poet and this proved a great introduction.