James Merrill with Tony Harwood, one of Merrill's first friends at Lawrenceville. The two remained friends, although their friendship became strained as Tony "grew progressively more detached and paranoid."
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.
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."
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."
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 ableā¦
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."