Thread: James Merrill
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Unread 11-08-2017, 08:06 PM
Erik Olson Erik Olson is offline
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I, for my part, have very mixed responses to Merrill; I am not familiar with his opus enough to say what the exact reading list would optimally be; but if I had anything to say on this front... I agreed at the very least with this New York Times article's characterization of the poet's less fortunate tendencies.
The poet is an aesthete, a dandy in the Baudelairean sense, unabashedly so. One critic has referred to Merrill’s style as “New Critical Baroque.” Rococo would probably be more apt. Where a straight line would do, Merrill cannot resist using filigree. But if one were to bypass his work, one would be missing some of the finest poems written in English in the middle of last century, poems like “Mornings in a New House,” “Lost in Translation” or “The Kimono,” a poem that shows Merrill at his most restrained...

A hopeless voluptuary when it comes to language, Merrill is addicted to wordplay, cleverness with form, ingenious rhymes… One can languish amid the poet’s digressions. Merrill’s gifts with language often become his vice. His poetry, when read in quantity, even in this expertly edited selection by J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser, can at times seem like a repast of macaroons and tawny port. He is best read a poem or two at a time…[emphasis my own]
Anyway, I think The Green Eye, or Periwinkles, or The Locusts might be good to read; for one thing, they introduce and prefigure the way in which the poet sees. I read he was a brilliant reader of poetry; here you can hear him read his poem Kimono. He wrote The Victor Dog, an exercise in virtuosity and wit, to Elizabeth Bishop.
Best,
Erik

Last edited by Erik Olson; 11-08-2017 at 08:58 PM.
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