 | James Merrill |
The life, legacy and work of Connecticut's first poet laureate, James Merrill, will be explored in a symposium on Monday, Feb. 7, one day following the 10th anniversary of the renowned poet's death.
"James Merrill: A Celebration" will feature a discussion of Merrill and his contributions, as well as a reading of some of his poems. It will begin at 4 p.m. in Rm. 211 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Yale Review, the Department of English and the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
The event will begin with a panel discussion on Merrill's life and legacy. Panelists include Langdon Hammer, professor of English at Yale and Merrill's official biographer; Alice Quinn, poetry editor of The New Yorker and director of The Poetry Society of America; and Stephen Yenser, professor of English and creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is one of Merrill's literary executors.
Following their presentation, there will be a reading of Merrill's poems by poets Frank Bidart, John Hollander (Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale) and Robin Magowan.
James Ingram Merrill was born in New York City in 1926, the son of Charles Merrill, co-founder of the brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, and Hellen Ingram. He began writing poems as a child, and his father privately published a book of them under the title "Jim's Book" when the younger Merrill was in prep school. As an undergraduate at Amherst College, Merrill studied under Reuben Brower, who later trained many renowned critics and literature teachers at Harvard University, and also met Robert Frost. Another book of his poetry, "The Black Swan," was privately printed while Merrill was still in college.
Merrill taught briefly at Bard College and then spent a couple of years traveling Europe. His first trade book, "First Poems," was published in 1951 to great acclaim. In 1955, he moved to Stonington, Connecticut, with his companion David Jackson, and one year later founded the Ingram Merrill Foundation, which has since awarded grants to hundreds of artists and writers.
Merrill's 1965 novel "The (Diblos) Notebook" was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction, and the following year his "Nights and Days" won the National Book Award in Poetry. He went on to earn numerous awards for his poetry, including the Bollingen Prize for "Braving the Elements" (1972), the Pulitzer Prize for "Divine Comedies" (1976), a second National Book Award for "Mirabell: Books of Number" (1978), the National Book Critics Circle Award for his epic poem "The Changing Light at Sandover" (1982) and the first Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry awarded by the Library of Congress for "The Inner Room" (1988).
His other books of poetry include "Water Street," "Scripts for the Pageant," "From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976," "Late Settings" and "A Scattering of Salts." Merrill published his memoir under the title "A Different Person" in 1993. He served as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and was also a judge for the Yale University Press' annual Yale Younger Poets competition for poets under the age of 40. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from Yale in 1982.
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