"Self-Portrait in a Tyvek Windbreaker"

"Self-Portrait in a Tyvek Windbreaker"

Merrill, James, 1926-1995

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 Merrill's later years and one of the strongest from any phase of his career. "...it is concerned not with personal memory, but with the present and the future of our culture."

Merrill, James

James Merrill Papers (MSS083) - Box 138, Folder 3537

1991: August 23

Series_IV_Manuscripts

Exhibit Cases 9-10: Love and Death

James Merrill: Life and Art, pp. 749-51

8 leaves. Recto and verso.

16 jpegs. 600 dpi.

English

Manuscript

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Washington University in St. Louis