James Merrill [Signed]
Description: Brooklyn NY: Jordan Davies, 1980. SIGNED AND NUMBERED LIMITED EDITION. NUMBER 46 OF 200 COPIES. FIRST EDITION. Original rose colored dust jacket with pink title to front panel over hand-tied plain gray wrappers, with embossed title page. Three poems originally published in Poughshares, The Nation and Georgia Review. Unpaginated. Housed in white envelope with typed title and author to top left corner.
The late James Merrill was recognized as one of the leading poets of his generation. Praised for his stylish elegance, moral sensibilities, and transformation of autobiographical moments into deep and complex meditations, Merrill’s work spans genres—including plays and prose—but the bulk of his artistic expression can be found in his poetry. Merrill’s talent was recognized immediately, though his earliest work was seen as polished and technically proficient rather than deep. It was not until his themes became more dramatic and personal that he began to win serious attention and literary acclaim.
Condition: Very Good crisp, clean book, beautiful in its simplicity with light wear and possible small paper dimples (visible in raking light) in Very Good mailer: clearly well protected by a concerned collector.
Additional Information: James Ingram Merrill (1926-1995) was an American poet. Over the long course of his career, Merrill won nearly every major literary award in America: he received two National Book Awards, for Nights and Days (1966) and Mirabell: Books of Numbers (1978); Merrill’s long Ouija-inspired epic poem The Changing Light at Sandover (1982) won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and he was awarded the inaugural Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry by the Library of Congress for his book The Inner Room (1988); he also received both the Bollingen Prize in Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize, the latter for a book of occult poetry called Divine Comedies (1976).
His poetry falls into two distinct bodies of work: the polished and formalist lyric poetry of his early career, and the epic narrative of occult communication with spirits and angels, titled The Changing Light at Sandover (published in three volumes from 1976 to 1980), which dominated his later career. Merrill served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1979 until his death. While wintering in Arizona, he died on February 6, 1995 from a heart attack related to AIDS. He and David Jackson are buried side by side at Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington.
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