Is anyone out there besides me an admirer of
James Merrill, the modern master of the heroic
couplet?

I am particularly fond of the trilogy of books
Merrill wrote in conjunction with a ouija
board. They are:
1. The Book of Ephraim
2. Mirabell
3. Scripts for the Pageant.

My favorite of these is "Ephraim." Ephraim is a Greek-
speaking Jew of the early Christian Era, and Merrill's
first contact in the after-life.

I would welcome any comments on the following matters:
1. Contemporary use of heroic couplets.
2. The ouija board as Muse.
3. Critique of any of the above books.
4. Merrill's view, or Dante's view, or your own
personal view, of life hereafter.

------------------

The Afterlife

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,
or riffling through a magazine in bed,
the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.

They are moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
You go to the place you always thought you would go,
the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

Some are being shot up a funnel of flashing colors
into a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air-conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
a woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.
With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals – eagles and leopards –and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of a furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.


Billy Collins, QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS,
University of Pittsburgh Press

I admire much of Merrill, particularly the exquisite early poems, but must confess I've never read the longer narrative ouija stuff (a failure of attention span?). I have only the most superficial familiarity with <u>The Changing Light at Sandover</u> (flipping through it at bookstores or libraries), and have only read snatches. (And it would be impossible to lay my hands on it here--so perhaps next time in the States will buy a copy. Now that it has Gail's imprimitur, it sounds much more interesting!)

I must say that Ephraim sounds like a character straight out of Cavafy. And of course, Cavafy was a big influence on Merrill.

Gail, would you mind posting a short section? (Or can it be excerpted?)

Bob, that's a hoot. I particularly like Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

Well you would. I like the big air-conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

NOTE TO A.E. -- I will post the opening lines
of "The Book of Ephraim" if I can find it at
the university library. You think finding
American literature is difficult in Greece --
you should try rural Louisiana.

Okay, found it! Here is the passage that
introduces Ephraim. Merrill and his friend David Jackson are at the ouija board:

Correct but cautious, that first night we asked
our visitor's name, era, habitat.
EPHRAIM came the answer. A Greek Jew
born AD 8 at XANTHOS. Where was that?
In Greece WHEN WOLVES & RAVENS WER IN ROME
(Next the classical dictionary yielded
a Xanthos on the Asia Minor coast.)
NOW WHO ARE U. We told him. ARE U XTIANS
We guessed so. WHAT A COZY CATACOMB
Christ had WROUGHT HAVOC in his family,
ENTICED MY FATHER FROM MY MOTHER'S BED
(I too had issued from a broken home-
the first of several facts to coincide.)
Later a favorite of TIBERIUS, Died
AD 36 on CAPRI, throttled
by the imperial guard for having loved
THE MONSTERS NEPHEW (sic) CALIGULA.
*******

Was he a devil? His reply MY POOR
INNOCENTS left the issue hanging fire.
As it flowed on, his stream-of-consciousness
deepened. There was a buried room, A BED
WROUGHT IN SILVER I CAN LEAD U THERE
IF If? YOU GIVE ME What? HA HA YR SOULS
(Another time he'll say that he misread
our innocence for insolence that night
and meant to scare us.) Our eyes met. What if...
The blood's least vessel hoisted jet-black sails.
Five whole minutes we were frightened stiff
--But after all, we weren't THAT innocent.
The Rover Boys at thirty, still red-blooded
enough not to pass up an armchair revel
and pur enough at heart to beat the devil,
entered into the spirit, so to speak
and said they'd leave for Capri that same week.

Pause. Then, as though we'd passed a test,
Ephraim's whole manner changed. He brushed aside
Tiberius and settled to the task
of answering, like an experienced guide,
those questions we had lacked the wit to ask.


(Merrill capitalizes every line, which I was too lazy
to do. Also, I see that he's mostly using blank verse
here. I remembered the whole thing as being in couplets.)

Gail,

Do you know if Merrill and J. D. McClatchy were buddies?

Bob

R.J., I hate to admit it, but I don't know a thing
about J.D. McClatchey. Can you tell me something?

Here is another view of the hereafter, this one from the
delightful Stevie Smith:

MRS. SIMPKINS

Mrs. Simpkins never had very much to do
So it occurred to her one day that the Trinity wasn't true
Or at least but a garbled version of the truth
And that things had moved very far since the days of her youth.

So she became a spiritualist and at her very first party
Just to give her a feeling of confidence the spirit spoke
up hearty:
"Since I crossed over dear friends," it said "I'm no different to what I was before
Death's not a separation or alteration or parting, it's just a one-handled door.
We spirits can come back to you if your seance is orthodox
But you can't come over to us until your body's shut in a box.
And this is the great thought I want to leave with you today
You've heard it before but in case you forgot, Death isn't a passing away
It's just a carrying on with friends and relations and brightness,
Only you don't have to bother with sickness and there's no financial tightness."

Mrs. Simpkins went home and told her husband he was a weak-pated fellow
And when he heard the news he turned a daffodil shade of yellow.
"What do you mean, Maria?" he cried, "it can't be true there's no rest
From one's uncles and brothers and sisters nor even the wife of one's breast?"
"It's the truth," Mrs. Simpkins affirmed, "there is no separation
There's a great reunion coming for which this life's but a preparation."
This worked him to such a pitch that he shot himself through the head
And now she has to polish the floors of Westminster County Hall for her daily bread.