Browse Items (151 total)

Frederick Buechner, James Merrill's good friend from Lawrenceville, hanging from tree. "Freddy was an enthusiastic reader and a talented writer, with a confident, energetic mind that reveled in words and stories."

James Merrill and Kimon Friar, Merrill's Amherst teacher and lover. "Short, wiry, and dark, he was a high-minded, charismatic man of letters and an unabashed self-promoter."

Leila "Zelly" Howard, James Merrill's beloved governess, with whom he remained close until her death in 1977.

Maria Mitsotaki and James Merrill. Merrill's face is bound as a result of Bell's Palsy, an episode recounted in "The Thousand and Second Night" (see also the manuscript pages for that poem).

"[Maria] was pert, pretty, small and sweet...and able…

Strato Mouflouzelis, "...the bittersweet muse of [James Merrill's] middle years..."

See also "Days of 1964" manuscripts, November 17, 1964 letter to Daryl Hine and "Violent Pastoral" broadside.

Judith Moffett, who "...brought a strong moral idealism, sensitivity to the perspective of gay men, and an appetite for literature."

David McIntosh, a disciplined, reserved painter of abstract landscapes who drew a "'firm and gentle line' between love and friendship, and what he wanted was the latter."

Tony Parigory and James Merrill. "Tall, smiling, Alexandrian Tony...In his worldly wisdom, off-color jokes, and macaronic bons mots...he resembled none of Merrill's friends so much as Ephraim, the Familiar Spirit."

Stephen Yenser, Merrill's student, friend, correspondent, literary executor, and "ideal reader."

Mona Van Duyn: fellow prize-winning poet, early champion and good friend of James Merrill, she successfully solicited Merrill's literary papers for Washington University. In this photo she is standing in front of a painting of herself.