James Merrill died in 1995, aged 69, just
before his last book of new poems, A
Scattering of Salts, appeared. …..Since the
1970s he had been one of America’s
best-known serious poets: the formal agility
of his shorter poems had inspired legions of
imitators, and his book-length poem The
Changing Light at Sandover had acquired
a flock of interpreters. Even as Merrill’s
admirers (me, for example) treasured that
last book, new questions arose: When would there be a book of all
the poems? Were there post-Salts poems, and would we see them?
What would his work look like as a whole? Would important facts
about the man emerge? This monumental and timely Collected
answers the first three questions, while Alison Lurie’s brief, frustrating
memoir tries to answer the last. Both books remind us how, and how
often, the poems depict, and reflect on, Merrill’s life.
Boston Review
