Browse Items (206 total)

Program for a dramatic reading of Voices From Sandover featuring James Merrill, Leah Doyle and Peter Hooten sponsored by The Library of Congress, April 9, 1993.

Clippings from "Lit Review" by Mr. W. L. Frederici concerning Merrill from The Lawrence at Amherst College, January 15, 1943.

"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.”

These are the only surviving remnants of James Merrill's attempted Ouija board novel, in a folder labeled "Lost 70's Novel," in Merrill's hand. After losing two different prose drafts of the novel, he decided to write a verse narrative instead, which…

In this popular poem, Merrill reminisces about the summer of 1937, waiting for and then working on a jigsaw puzzle with his governess, Zelly, and her teaching him "her languages." "Lost in Translation" is often cited as Merrill's greatest short poem.…

"Mirror" was published in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace. Included here is one typescript among 11 total pages with holograph notes and alternative titles. It was inspired by the Ephraim séances and is commonly held to be Merrill's…

Typescript draft of "Mr. Pope and Mr. Pratt" by James Merrill most likely written during his time at Amherst, circa 1940's.

Program for "Ninth Annual Literary Festival" sponsored by Southern Methodist University, November 6 - November 11, 1983. Featured speakers included James Merrill, William H. Gass, Albert Goldbarth, Richard Howard, Rita Dove, Erica Jong, Glenda Adams,…

Newspaper clipping of "Pulitzer Bullish on Merrill '47" by David Applefield from the Amherst Student.

Holograph and typescript fragments toward and three full drafts of "Self-Portrait in a Tyvek Windbreaker." A play on John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," and published in A Scattering of Salts, it is one of the longest poems of…