Browse Items (9 total)

Flyer advertisingThe Image Maker, a one-act verse play for two actors about Santeria, the syncretic art and religion of the Caribbean. The play featured Hooten, puppets, and a subtext about James Merrill's mother.

Newspaper clippings related to Charles Merrill's and Hellen Ingram Merrill's divorce. The "broken home" had a profound effect on James Merrill remembering his childhood as a lonely one.

James Merrill as a baby with his parents, Charles and Hellen. After three weeks in the hospital, Hellen recorded James's weight weekly, through December.

A draft of a letter to Merrill's mother, Hellen Ingram Plummer, to prepare her for the publication of his memoir,A Different Person, which contained elements of his life he knew would be unsettling to her.

Journal entry in which Merrill recounts his mother's discovery of his love affair with Kimon Friar.

"Looking at Mummy," Merrill's first poem at age 6, written in his mother's hand (so how much of it she may have written herself remains a question). This experience/poem later influenced “The Broken Home.”

Hellen Plummer letter to James Merrill regarding "Lost in Translation" and how much his work keeps impressing her. She shows herself to be a "fair literary critic" in this letter.

Typed letter from James Merrill to his mother Hellen Ingram Plummer, explaining the spirit Ephraim and what Merrill is learning about patrons, representatives, and other topics.

James Merrill letter to Hellen Ingram Merrill with a poem draft inspired by Hans Lodeizen, shortly after his death. This later turned into "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace," a pastoral elegy that imagined a world "under the world."