James Merrill

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James Ingram Merrill (born March 3, 1926 in New York City , † February 6, 1995 in Tucson , Arizona ) was an American writer and in 1977 the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry .

Life

Merrill was born to Hellen Ingram Merrill and Charles E. Merrill , a founding partner of the investment firm Merrill Lynch . Merrill had two older step-siblings from his father's first marriage. Merrill enjoyed a privileged life and a good upbringing as a child. He received private tuition and learned French and German. In his poem Lost in Translation , Merrill writes about his childhood experiences. His parents separated when Merrill was 11 years old and divorced when he was 13 years old. Merrill attended Lawrenceville School as a teenager , where he made friends with Frederick Buechner . When Merrill turned 16, his father began collecting his short stories and poems and published them as a surprise under the title Jim's Book .

In 1944, Merrill suspended his studies for an eight-month service in the United States Army . In 1945 he returned to Amherst College and graduated there in 1947. A collection of his poems under the title The Black Swan was published by his mentor Professor Kimon Friar at Amherst College and privately in Athens, Greece in 1946. In 1951 Merrill published his first publically concerned edition, First Poems, by Alfred A. Knopf .

Merrill fell in love with the author David Noyes Jackson , with whom he lived for four decades. Merrill and Jackson met in New York City in 1953 after a performance of Merrill's The Bait . Together they moved to Stonington , Connecticut in 1955 . In the following two decades they each spent part of the year in Athens, Greece. Greek subjects, places and people played an important role in Merrill's literary work. Starting in 1979, Merrill and Jackson spent their vacation every year in Key West , Florida . Among his friends in Stonington was the British author Stephen Spender, who taught at the nearby University of Connecticut.

In the 1993 memoir, Merrill paints a portrait of gay life in the early 1950s, depicting relationships with various men including the author Claude Fredericks , the art dealer Robert Isaacson , David Noyes Jackson, and the actor Peter Hooten . As a philanthropist , he founded the Ingram Merrill Foundation . This foundation supported literary, artistic and television people throughout Merrill's lifetime. Merrill was close friends with the writer Elizabeth Bishop and the film producer Maya Deren ; He also supported both financially in their projects (as many other authors, often anonymously). Merrill served as chair of the Academy of American Poets from 1979 until his death in 1995 .

Merrill died in Tucson, Arizona on February 6, 1995 of a heart attack.

Awards and honors (selection)

Merrill won the Glascock Prize for The Black Swan at the start of his writing career . In the course of his further writing, he received numerous important poetry awards in the United States, including

Works by Merrill

Since his death the works of Merrill are divided into three areas: Collection of Poems , collection of prose and collection novels and pieces :

poetry

  • The Black Swan (1946)
  • First Poems (1951)
  • The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace (1959)
  • Water Street (1962)
  • Nights and Days (1966)
  • The Fire Screen (1969)
  • Braving the Elements (1972)
  • Divine Comedies (1976), including "Lost in Translation" and The Book of Ephraim
  • Mirabell: Books of Number (1978)
  • Scripts for the Pageant (1980)
  • The Changing Light at Sandover (1982)
  • From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 (1982)
  • Late Settings (1985)
  • The Inner Room (1988)
  • Selected Poems 1946-1985 (1992)
  • A Scattering of Salts (1995)
  • Collected Poems (2001) ISBN 0-375-41139-9

prose

  • Recitative (1986) - Essays
  • A Different Person (1993) memoir
  • Collected Prose (2004) ISBN 0-375-41136-4

Novels and plays

Novels

  • The Seraglio (1957)
  • The (Diblos) Notebook (1965)

drama

  • The Birthday (1947)
  • The Immortal Husband (1955)
  • The bait

collection

Literature on Merrill

  • Stephen Yenser , The Consuming Myth: The Work of James Merrill , 1987
  • Alison Lurie , Familiar Spirits: A Memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson , 2000
  • James Merrill: Essays in Criticism , 1983
  • Robert Polito , "A Reader's Guide to The Changing Light at Sandover," 1994
  • Reflected Houses , 1986
  • The Voice of the Poet: James Merrill , 1999, Audio Book
  • Langdon Hammer: James Merrill: Life and Art. Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House), New York 2015. ISBN 978-0-375-41333-9 (print); ISBN 978-0-385-35308-3 (eBook). Reviewed in: The New Yorker , April 13, 2015 [1]

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mel Gussow: James Merrill Is Dead at 68; Elegant Poet of Love and Loss. In: The New York Times . February 7, 1995, accessed August 13, 2012 .
  2. ^ Members: James Merrill. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 14, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Merrill, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Merrill, James Ingram (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1995
Place of death Tucson , Arizona