Browse Items (151 total)

James Merrill letter to Daryl Hine including Merrill's realization that he's using psychoanalytic thinking as a tool for enchantment rather than demystification, making life and art even more intertwined (see also "Under Libra" draft).

Hellen Plummer letter to James Merrill regarding "Lost in Translation" and how much his work keeps impressing her. She shows herself to be a "fair literary critic" in this letter.

James Merrill letter to Tony Parigory discussing typing the Ouija transcripts to make a prose memoir. Merrill also mentions his problem of losing the novel manuscripts.

James Merrill letter to Peter Hooten written in Key West to be read when Hooten wakes up. Merrill is begging Hooten to "get a hold of [his] feelings" and states that "the only permitted feeling is loyal clear-eyed love." This is one of the first…

"Looking at Mummy," Merrill's first poem at age 6, written in his mother's hand (so how much of it she may have written herself remains a question). This experience/poem later influenced “The Broken Home.”

Merrill's first diary, including an entry in which he recounts how he cleverly got out of being de-pantsed by David Mixsell at Lawrenceville School. One of Merrill's drawings is laid in beside the entry.

Journal entry in which Merrill recounts his mother's discovery of his love affair with Kimon Friar.

Journal 59 includes numerous pages of early holograph notes and drafts toward "The Broken Home," one of which is included here. Merrill's most autobiographical poem to date, "The Broken Home" centered on his parents' troubled relationship. It was…

A Ouija séance transcript regarding Wallace Stevens in the afterlife. This serves as one example of Merrill and Jackson frequently communicating with recently-deceased writers and friends, and also of the topics of literary vocation and sexual…

A poem draft with examples of wordplay, an important exercise for James Merrill throughout his writing life. This entry also contains notes on Ephraim and Cold War nuclear annihilation worries.