Browse Items (206 total)

This photo album, entitled "Happy Days at Stonington," includes snapshots taken around James Merrill and David Jackson's home at 107 Water Street, along with colorful commentary.

A homemade Ouija board, one of numerous boards James Merrill and David Jackson employed through the years for their séances. Merrill said they preferred these to the store-bought boards because they allowed for more room for clearer and faster…

During the October 8 and 10, 1979 séances, Merrill finds out about and communicates with the recently deceased Elizabeth Bishop, an esteemed poet who influenced his own work and a close friend.

The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace, first published in 1959, contains poems written over an eight-year period, which "are a collection of symbols and epiphanies drawn from experience but set off from it in an ideal, timeless space, a…

Water Street marks a turning point in James Merrill's writing; the book is "local and particular: it calls attention to where, and by implication how, the poet is living." Included here are the covers of two 1962 editions, with inscriptions and an…

Various drafts of "Days of 1994," the fifth in James Merrill's "Days of" series, completing his homage to Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy. "Days of 1994" revolves around approaching death and what he will leave behind. Included here are five of a…

James Merrill's poem "Death Masks" from an issue of the Lawrenceville publication The Lit. The poem is a dramatic monologue spoken by a man who sells death masks made from the faces of artists.

Hooten, Merrill, Yenser in a photo capturing a happy moment between the three.

Photograph of James Merrill in a purple turtle neck standing amid the ginkgo trees at Washington University, November 18, 1994.

James Merrill and David Jackson at Ouija board in Stonington. The photo was taken by Harry Pemberton, who took a roll of the mediums in action.