james+merrill

Erica Downing 4/21/11

=James Merrill=

1926- 1995
#|James Merrill, born March 3rd 1926 and died February 6th 1995. He was born in New York City and his parents got #|divorced in 1939. From age eight to age sixteen #|James's father already had a book full of his poems. #|James went to #|Amherst College where he met #|Robert Frost and James had to leave early to serve in the U.S. military in 1944 and returned in 1947. After he graduated he taught at #|Bard college and left a year later to go to Europe for two and a half years. His first publish was First Poems in 1951. He moved to Stonington in 1985 and in that same year he published his first play "The Immortal Husband". James wrote a second novel "The Notebook" in 1965. His "Nights and Days" book won the national book award in #|poetry in 1966. James was Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets in 1979 until he died sixteen years later.

The Victor Dog
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,  The little white dog on the Victor label  Listens long and hard as he is able.  It's all in a day's work, whatever plays.

From judgment, it would seem, he has refrained.  He even listens earnestly to Bloch,  Then builds a church upon our acid rock.  He's man's--no--he's the Leiermann's best friend,

 Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.  Does he hear?I fancy he rather smells  Those lemon-gold arpeggios in Ravel's  "Les jets d'eau du palais de ceux qui s'aiment.

" He ponders the Schumann Concerto's tall willow hit  By lightning, and stays put.When he surmises  Through one of Bach's eternal boxwood mazes <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> The oboe pungent as a bitch in heat,

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Or when the calypso decants its raw bay rum <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Or the moon in Wozzeck reddens ripe for murder, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> He doesn't sneeze or howl; just listens harder. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Adamant needles bear down on him from

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Whirling of outer space, too black, too near-- <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> But he was taught as a puppy not to flinch, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Much less to imitate his bête noire Blanche <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Who barked, fat foolish creature, at King Lear.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;">Still others fought in the road's filth over Jezebel, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Slavered on hearths of horned and pelted barons. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> His forebears lacked, to say the least, forebearance. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Can nature change in him?Nothing's impossible.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> The last chord fades.The night is cold and fine. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> His master's voice rasps through the grooves' bare groves. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Obediently, in silence like the grave's <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> He sleeps there on the still-warm gramophone

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Only to dream he is at the première of a Handel <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Opera long thought lost--Il Cane Minore. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Its allegorical subject is his story! <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> A little dog revolving round a spindle

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> Gives rise to harmonies beyond belief, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> A cast of stars. . . . Is there in Victor's #|heart <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> No honey for the vanquished?Art is art. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> The life it asks of us is a dog's life.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">By: James Merrill

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">

<span style="color: #627d3b; font-family: verdana,arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0.08em; line-height: 15px; margin: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; width: 350px;">**MIRROR**
BY JAMES MERRILL

I grow old under an intensity Of questioning looks. //Nonsense//, I try to say, //I cannot teach you children// //How to live.—If not you, who will?// Cries one of them aloud, grasping my gilded Frame till the world sways. //If not you, who will?// Between their visits the table, its arrangement Of Bible, fern and Paisley, all past change, Does very nicely. If ever I feel curious As to what others endure, Across the parlor //you// provide examples, Wide open, sunny, of everything I am Not. You embrace a whole world without once caring To set it in #|order. That takes thought. Out there Something is being picked. The red-and-white bandannas Go to my heart. A fine young man Rides by on horseback. Now the door shuts. Hester Confides in me her first unhappiness. This much, you see, would never have been fitted Together, but for me. Why then is it They more and more neglect me? Late one sleepless Midsummer night I strained to keep Five tapers from your breathing. //No//, the widowed Cousin said, //let them go out//. I did. The room brimmed with gray sound, all the instreaming Muslin of your dream. . . Years later now, two of the grown grandchildren Sit with novels face-down on the sill, Content to muse upon your tall transparence, Your clouds, brown fields, persimmon far And cypress near. One speaks. //How superficial// // Appearances are! // Since then, as if a fish Had broken the perfect silver of my reflectiveness, I have lapses. I suspect Looks from behind, where nothing is, cool gazes Through the blind flaws of my mind. As days, As decades lengthen, this vision Spreads and blackens. I do not know whose it is, But I think it watches for my last silver To blister, flake, float leaf by life, each milling- Downward dumb conceit, to a standstill From which not even you strike any brilliant Chord in me, and to a faceless will, Echo of mine, I am amenable.

Credits:
[|http://bit.ly/85i090]

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