Bookfinder.US: Merrill James

	> Literature & Fiction > Authors A-Z > Merrill James


	Collected Prose James Merrill 0375411364 Oct 2004 Hardcover ·
From Publishers Weekly "There are after all things to be said for prose ... Yet I persist in seeing it as a mildly nightmarish medium, to which there is no end." Best known for the poetic trilogy he wrote with the guidance of an Ouija board, James Merrill believed that prose lacked the music of poetry. Nonetheless, his own letters and essays are an absolute pleasure—by turns gossipy, wise, pithy, lyrical and amusing. For this gracefully arranged volume, fellow poets McClatchy and Yenser sifted through Merrill’s prodigious output and compiled his final word on just about everything: Elizabeth Bishop, Kyoto, garlic soup, first loves, the art of poetry, the afterlife. At times, the sheer size of the volume is overwhelming, but dipping in and out of it can feel as pleasant as having a drink with the man himself—his tone is...


	Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire Jim Cymbala 0310251532 March 2003 Paperback ·
Book Review As though blowing oxygen upon the dying embers of a fire, pastor Jim Cymbala revived a broken-down church in a rough-shod inner-city neighborhood through Christian faith. Twenty-five years ago, the Brooklyn Tabernacle could barely draw 26 people to a Sunday service. Nowadays the congregation is 6,000 strong--filled with converted prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts, and homeless people, as well as yuppies and wholesome families. Although he's quick to give God credit for this miraculous success story, Cymbala admits that there may be a few human decisions that led to this Christian triumph. Most significantly, he made sure his church community embraced everyone, from all walks of life--no matter how distasteful or foreign. "Christians often hesitate to reach out to those who are different," according to Cymbala. "They want God...


	The Changing Light at Sandover James Merrill 0307263215 February 2006 Hardcover ·
Book Description James Merrill’s audacious and dazzling epic poem, The Changing Light at Sandover, remains as startling today as when it first emerged in separate volumes over a period of several years. Individual parts won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the entire poem, when it was collected into one volume in 1982, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is now an American classic, here in a definitive new hardcover edition that includes Voices from Sandover, Merrill’s recasting of the poem for the stage. The book carries us to the scene of Merrill’s Ouija board sessions with his partner, David Jackson—the candlelit Stonington dining room with its flame-colored walls and the famous Willowware cup they used as a pointer in their occult travels. In a shimmering...


	Familiar Spirits: A Memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson Alison Lurie 0142000450 February 2002 Paperback ·
Book Review Written with her characteristic grace, novelist Alison Lurie's memoir of her friendship with the poet James Merrill and his companion David Jackson offers more than reminiscences, though these are tender, frank, and perceptive. Lurie also considers the broader subjects of fame's arbitrary nature and its impact on a relationship, as well as the perils and pleasures of dabbling in the occult. When she first became close to the couple in 1954, all three were struggling young writers. But while Merrill soon became a critically respected poet, and novels like The War Between the Tates made Lurie some money as well as a reputation, Jackson remained unpublished and obscure. He was understandably frustrated, and Lurie suggests that the pair's increasing involvement in sessions on their Ouija board were partly an effort to find an...


	Above the Land Julie Agoos 0300038615 Apr 1987 Hardcover ·
From Library Journal Using images that sometimes startle the reader, this 30-year-old poet reevaluates her own "land" through travel (London, Florence) and close observations. Agoos pays careful attention to a place's ghoststhe impressive lead poem traces in 10 stanzas the history of a farm through its inhabitants and the weather. She reveals an adept juggling of rhythms"delighted, self-invited, second-sighted" for end-rhymes; occasional brilliant reversals"Oh my darling, look: how life/ imitates art in the afternoon"; and a tuning of the senses, as in "shy grey as those feathers." There is a sure presence and considerable skill here, as one would expect from the latest winner of Yale's "Younger Poet" series. Rosaly DeMaios Roffman, English Dept., Indiana Univ . of PennsylvaniaCopyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.


	James Merrill's Poetic Quest, Vol. 81 Don Adams 0313302502 April 1997 Hardcover ·
Book Description Relatively little critical attention has been directed towards the explication of James Merrill's difficult poems, much less towards the understanding of his densely-layered symbolism. This is the first comprehensive study to look at Merrill's difficult symbolic system and to provide a close reading of Merrill's epic poem The Changing Light at Sandover. Adams reads Merrill's poetry through various lenses, primarily those of Freudian psychology and of the Jungian archetypal system. His approach allows the reader to view individual works as part of the larger picture of Merrill's quest to save his life through his art. About the Author DON ADAMS is Assistant Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University.


	This Composite Voice: The Role of W.B. Yeats in James Merrill's Poetry, Vol. 24 Mark A. Bauer 041596637X July 2003 Hardcover ·
Review "This is one of those rare--increasingly rare--studies of a major poet that is a MUST, a book that must be read by anyone who wishes to appreciate better either the brilliance of Merrill or the dynamics of poetic influence at its best. Bauer's incomparable sense of Merrill's engagement with both the fire and the vacillations of Yeats makes lines one might have thought too baffling or merely witty emerge rich, strange, urbane, complex, and luminous.." –Leslie Brisman, Karl Young Professor of English, Yale University "Mark Bauer's study of the influence relation between W. B. Yeats and James Merrill is illuminating, eloquent, and marked by authentic insight into both these great poets. As a demonstration of critical scholarship, Bauer's book is exemplary. It will be of permanent use to all readers of...


	Hermit with Landscape Daniel Hall 0300047339 Sept 1990 Paperback ·
From Publishers Weekly Like the fading touch-me-nots a friend is here described nurturing, these intricate meditative poems are "mementos of the time / and pains taken to get things down / before they go . " Hall's first collection, selected by Merrill for the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, constellates around timebound gestures of reconciliation and resignation, its line of vision always seeming to refract through the convexities of the hourglass. The craftsmanship is consistently adroit and admirably low-key: Hall knows the virtues of the half-rhyme and the well-tempered stanza. But he can also be fastidious to the point of fussiness, needlessly cryptic and too readily lulled by easy abstractions and souped-up truisms. Dividing their loyalties between the urge to "travel / light and live, upon arrival / lighter still" and...


	Poems of New York Elizabeth Schmidt (Editor) 0375415041 August 2002 Hardcover ·
From Publishers Weekly From Walt Whitman's "Mannahatta" to Ted Berrigan's "Whitman in Black" and beyond to Hettie Jones's "Dust A Survival Kit, Fall 2001," Poems of New York collects poetic responses to Gotham's many facets. Selected and edited by Open City contributing editor and New York Times Book Review poetry reviewer Elizabeth Schmidt, the more than 125 poems here tend toward less familiar works from familiar names. Instead of Frank O'Hara's "A Step Away from Them" we get "Steps" ("all I want is a room up there/ and you in it") though Auden's "September 1, 1939" and Williams's famous "The Great Figure" the figure `5' glimpsed on a fire truck are here. As Schmidt notes in her introduction, "Poets who have written about New York are masters at preserving, and allowing us to cherish, moments of life in this theater of chance and...


	James Merrill: An Introduction to the Poetry Judith Moffett 0231052103 November 1984 Hardcover ·



	Reader's Guide to James Merrill's the Changing Light at Sandover Robert Polito 0472065246 January 1995 Paperback ·
Book Description An invaluable road map for the epic poem of our time


	The Voice of the Poet James Merrill 0375406670 Apr 1999 Audio Cassette - Abridged ·
Book Review Audiobook Review James Merrill, the son of Merrill Lynch cofounder Charles Lynch, rose from a privileged but unsettled childhood to become one of the leading lyrical poets of the 20th century. Composed of rare, self-read recordings and a booklet containing the text of each poem, The Voice of the Poet: James Merrill celebrates Merrill and his complex grapplings with love and loss. Listeners will immerse themselves in the poet's melodic narration in such classics as "The Days of 1964," "An Urban Convalescence," and "Lost in Translation." "The Broken Home," a reflection on his parents' widely publicized divorce, nails Merrill's love/loss dichotomy perfectly by showing his struggle to reconcile their differences. Listen to Merrill read "The School Play." Visit our audio help page for more information. (Running time: 1 hour, 1...


	Underdogs: Beauty Is More than Fur Deep Jim Dratfield 060960872X February 2002 Hardcover ·
Book Description The charming Chihuahua and the pugnacious pug. The graceful greyhound, the shaggy sheepdog, and the brazen bulldog. The miraculously mesmerizing mutt. These are not the dogs that are typically celebrated in dog books—those focus on the most popular purebreds: Labrador retrievers, Jack Russells, German shepherds Dalmatians. But where are the other breeds? And where are the non-breeds that make up more than half of the U.S. dog population, the mutts? Where is their book? If Americans love anything, it’s the underdog—every kind of underdog, whether it’s a dog or not. We recognize that beauty is more than skin deep—or fur deep. We appreciate dogs of indeterminate lineage, with mottled fur, too-large ears, or strange little bodies; we love dogs who look like impish little children or...


	Collected Novels and Plays James Ingram Merrill 0375411372 Nov 2002 Hardcover ·
From Library Journal Merrill, the son of Merrill-Lynch founder Charles E. Merrill, is best known for his refined poetry. This collection, the second (following Collected Poems) in a multivolume series devoted to his oeuvre, includes two novels and several plays. The Seraglio, the more substantial novel, deals with aging business tycoon Benjamin Tanning and his relations with ex-wives, lovers, and family members, as seen through the eyes of his son Francis. In its treatment of manners and morals, innocence and corruption, and Americans abroad, it echoes, though less artfully, themes generally associated with Henry James. The second novel, The (Diblos) Notebook, a more experimental work set in Greece, recounts a tale of two half-brothers and a love affair with a Greek woman. The plays include The Birthday, a drama in blank verse; The...


	Poder Vivo Jim Cymbala 0829732896 May 2001 Paperback ·
Book Description It's time for us to get hold of the Holy Spirit - or rather, to let Him get hold of us. Pastor Jim Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle cuts through the theological clutter about the Holy Spirit with this fundamental truth: We need the Spirit desperately. All our cleverness can't transform a single crack addict, heal the heart of a rape victim, or draw a jaded businessman to Christ. Only God's Spirit can do that. Drawing examples from the Bible and from the sidewalks of New York City, "Fresh Power" shows what happens when the Spirit of God moves in your midst. "God is using the Brooklyn Tabernacle to teach us how to pray and to not give up. If you need energy, this book is for you. Without a doubt, it is for me." Max Lucado "My prayer is that this book makes the church examine itself. ...


	Collected Poems James Merrill 0375411399 Feb 2001 Hardcover ·
From Publishers Weekly Lauded at his death as a major American writer, a great poet of sociability and comedy, an important part of the gay literary tradition and a master of traditional forms, Merrill (1926-1995) is well-served by this monumental gathering off his shorter poems, carefully edited and likely to garner major attention and sales. McClatchy (Twenty Questions, etc.) is Merrill's literary executor, and Yenser the author of a Merrill monograph. They include Merrill's 11 trade volumes; poems from two small-press books, The Black Swan (1946) and The Yellow Pages (1974); 21 verse translations; and 45 poems retrieved from periodicals and manuscripts. Excluded are some juvenilia and light verse, as well as Merrill's book-length poem The Changing Light at Sandover, in print as a separate volume. Merrill's sonnets, sapphics, longer...