Table of Contents
Introduction
Steven Meyer
James Merrill's Narrative Prose
Garth Hallberg
The Summer Palace: James Merrill's Fantastical Wallpaper
Ida McCall and Margaret Funkhouser
The Occasional Verse
Jennifer Kronovet and…
James Merrill's baby book with birth announcement. Discussed in Merrill's memoir, A Different Person, the baby book contains the list of gifts Merrill received at birth, including stock shares, silver spoons, gold diaper pins, etc.
While he earned his literary reputation on the strength of his many works in verse, James Merrill also carried on a long and intimate relationship with the genre of narrative prose. As a reader, he generally preferred novels to poems, and admired,…