James Ingram Merrill attended the highly rated Lawrenceville prep school from 1939 to 1943; his stories and poems appeared in the student literary magazine and he joined the editorial staff in 1942. This issue is open to the poem "Nocturne". Accompanying is the 1942 Christmas issue of The Lit, open to Merrill's poem "Christmas 1500", which appeared about the same time in a considerably revised and shortened form in his first published collection, Jim's Book.
James Merrill has said that he began to write poems at Lawrenceville due to his friendship with fellow student Frederick Buechner, who shared editorial chores at The Lit and also published in its pages. Buechner was to become an author of note himself, perhaps best known for his first novel, A Long Day's Dying, issued in 1950. JIM'S BOOK: A COLLECTION OF POEMS AND SHORT STORIES New York: Privately Printed, 1942. Limited to approximately 200 copies. Grey paper over boards, maroon cloth spine; title and author printed in gold on front cover; glassine dust wrapper. Printed at the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Massachusetts. James Merrill's first book was published as a surprise by his father when the author was sixteen years old. The book is one of the most highly sought after volumes of modern poetry. Washington University is very fortunate to have two copies of Jim's Book, one the gift of Mr. Merrill in December 1968 and the other inscribed to his grandmother at Christmas 1942 and given to the Library in December 1982 by Mr. Merrill's mother, Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. PHOTOGRAPH OF PRIVATE JAMES MERRILL IN UNITED STATES ARMY UNIFORM 1944 6 1/2" x 9", labelled "Proof Only". James Merrill entered Amherst College, his father's alma mater, in 1943. His studies were interrupted by service in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1945. He returned to Amherst after his discharge and was graduated at age 20 with a B.A. degree summa cum laude in 1947. His undergraduate thesis was on metaphor in Proust, a copy of which is among his papers at Washington University. An early appearance in Poetry magazine in 1946 was honored with the Oscar Blumenthal Prize in 1947, a very special achievement for an undergraduate. THE MEDUSA Volume I, Number I (Fall 1946) [all published] Edited by James Merrill and William Burford. Deep pink stapled wrappers printed in black. Four of James Merrill's poems appear in this magazine, which took the name The Medusa from a student organization at Amherst College, although it was published independently. The periodical includes work by members of the group and their guests; some of the pieces had appeared earlier in other publications. Contributors include Kimon Friar, Anais Nin, and Maya Deren as well as Merrill and Burford, the editors. The periodical is open to Merrill's poem, "The Black Swan." The text of the poem was unaltered in subsequent printings in The Black Swan (1946) and First Poems (1951) but changes have been made by the time of its appearance in From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 [1983]. The three other poems in the magazine are "The Broken Bowl", "From Morning into Morning", and "Medusa". THE BLACK SWAN AND OTHER POEMS Athens: Icaros, 1946. Limited to 100 numbered copies not for sale. This is copy 52. Presentation copy, with the Greek inscription facing the title poem translated by the author: "Of all my friends I have found you most a friend". Pale blue-grey sewn wrappers; cover title printed in black and red, featuring a black swan reflected in water; publisher's logo printed in black on rear cover; glassine dust jacket. Printed by M. Myrtidis in October 1946. This collection of twelve poems is dedicated to Kimon Friar, who introduced the young poet to a variety of modern writers while he was an undergraduate. Washington University is very fortunate to hold two copies of this book, one a gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. THE BIRTHDAY: A PLAY IN VERSE [No place: no publisher, 1947] Mimeographed sheets, on recto only, 14"x 8 1/2", 13 pp.; issued stapled in upper left corner. Accompanied by a photograph of a scene from the play, the Gift of Thomas Howkins. Merrill's play was performed at Kirby Theatre, Amherst College, May 22 and 23, 1947, when Merrill was a senior. The production was part of a one-act play competition. Washington University's copy of the play has "Charles", one of the character's names, written in the upper right corner of the first page; possibly this was the actor's copy. There are three changes in the text: one line is eliminated, and two words are altered. Comparison with the final, undated typescript in the Merrill Papers, shows that these changes were not made until production. It is thought that approximately 30 copies of the production text were prepared. TEN POETS ANTHOLOGY East Dorset, Vermont: Anthony Harrigan, Publisher, [ca. 1947] Limited to approximately 200 copies. Off-white wrappers with title printed in red on cover. James Merrill's contribution to this pamphlet is the poem, "The Formal Lovers", along with a previously unpublished autobiographical statement mentioning in part his receipt of the Irene Glascock Memorial Poetry Prize at Mt. Holyoke in 1946. Other contributors include Frederick Buechner and Richard Wilbur. TWENTY-ONE LYRICS [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, [1950] Blue-green stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover within a decorative border. Printed at The Vermont Printing Co., Brattleboro, Vermont. Gift of James Merrill This pamphlet, produced for the Humanities 1-2 classes at Amherst, includes Merrill's poem "The Broken Bowl", which had already appeared in his privately-printed collection, The Black Swan (1946). Textually, there are no changes between the two, but one word -- "face" for "space" in the final stanza--has been changed by the time the poem appears in First Poems the next year. Radical revisions occur thirty years later when From the First Nine is published. TEN STUDENT POEMS [cover title] [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, ca. 1951] Off-white stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover. The subtitle on the cover reads "A Selection of Poetry Composed by Students in English 23-24, Advanced Composition, at Amherst College, 1944-1951". The pamphlet includes "The Forms of Death" by James Merrill, marking the poem's first appearance in book form. Accompanying the pamphlet is a three-page draft of the poem showing changes in title, dedication, and a few lines in the first section. More importantly, the worksheets include a second section, later abandoned. A subsequent draft in the Merrill Papers is dated 1946. The poem was apparently not collected elsewhere, although it did appear in a 1948 issue of Accent magazine, with the second section still intact. FIRST POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Edition limited to 990 numbered copies. This is copy 855. Maroon cloth over boards with author printed in blind on front cover, and Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. Off-white endpapers. White dust jacket printed in olive-green. Accompanied by the final typescript of the poems, some with revisions, and two pages of typescript notes about four of the poems. Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention. The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
James Merrill's first book was published as a surprise by his father when the author was sixteen years old. The book is one of the most highly sought after volumes of modern poetry. Washington University is very fortunate to have two copies of Jim's Book, one the gift of Mr. Merrill in December 1968 and the other inscribed to his grandmother at Christmas 1942 and given to the Library in December 1982 by Mr. Merrill's mother, Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. PHOTOGRAPH OF PRIVATE JAMES MERRILL IN UNITED STATES ARMY UNIFORM 1944 6 1/2" x 9", labelled "Proof Only". James Merrill entered Amherst College, his father's alma mater, in 1943. His studies were interrupted by service in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1945. He returned to Amherst after his discharge and was graduated at age 20 with a B.A. degree summa cum laude in 1947. His undergraduate thesis was on metaphor in Proust, a copy of which is among his papers at Washington University. An early appearance in Poetry magazine in 1946 was honored with the Oscar Blumenthal Prize in 1947, a very special achievement for an undergraduate. THE MEDUSA Volume I, Number I (Fall 1946) [all published] Edited by James Merrill and William Burford. Deep pink stapled wrappers printed in black. Four of James Merrill's poems appear in this magazine, which took the name The Medusa from a student organization at Amherst College, although it was published independently. The periodical includes work by members of the group and their guests; some of the pieces had appeared earlier in other publications. Contributors include Kimon Friar, Anais Nin, and Maya Deren as well as Merrill and Burford, the editors. The periodical is open to Merrill's poem, "The Black Swan." The text of the poem was unaltered in subsequent printings in The Black Swan (1946) and First Poems (1951) but changes have been made by the time of its appearance in From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 [1983]. The three other poems in the magazine are "The Broken Bowl", "From Morning into Morning", and "Medusa". THE BLACK SWAN AND OTHER POEMS Athens: Icaros, 1946. Limited to 100 numbered copies not for sale. This is copy 52. Presentation copy, with the Greek inscription facing the title poem translated by the author: "Of all my friends I have found you most a friend". Pale blue-grey sewn wrappers; cover title printed in black and red, featuring a black swan reflected in water; publisher's logo printed in black on rear cover; glassine dust jacket. Printed by M. Myrtidis in October 1946. This collection of twelve poems is dedicated to Kimon Friar, who introduced the young poet to a variety of modern writers while he was an undergraduate. Washington University is very fortunate to hold two copies of this book, one a gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. THE BIRTHDAY: A PLAY IN VERSE [No place: no publisher, 1947] Mimeographed sheets, on recto only, 14"x 8 1/2", 13 pp.; issued stapled in upper left corner. Accompanied by a photograph of a scene from the play, the Gift of Thomas Howkins. Merrill's play was performed at Kirby Theatre, Amherst College, May 22 and 23, 1947, when Merrill was a senior. The production was part of a one-act play competition. Washington University's copy of the play has "Charles", one of the character's names, written in the upper right corner of the first page; possibly this was the actor's copy. There are three changes in the text: one line is eliminated, and two words are altered. Comparison with the final, undated typescript in the Merrill Papers, shows that these changes were not made until production. It is thought that approximately 30 copies of the production text were prepared. TEN POETS ANTHOLOGY East Dorset, Vermont: Anthony Harrigan, Publisher, [ca. 1947] Limited to approximately 200 copies. Off-white wrappers with title printed in red on cover. James Merrill's contribution to this pamphlet is the poem, "The Formal Lovers", along with a previously unpublished autobiographical statement mentioning in part his receipt of the Irene Glascock Memorial Poetry Prize at Mt. Holyoke in 1946. Other contributors include Frederick Buechner and Richard Wilbur. TWENTY-ONE LYRICS [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, [1950] Blue-green stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover within a decorative border. Printed at The Vermont Printing Co., Brattleboro, Vermont. Gift of James Merrill This pamphlet, produced for the Humanities 1-2 classes at Amherst, includes Merrill's poem "The Broken Bowl", which had already appeared in his privately-printed collection, The Black Swan (1946). Textually, there are no changes between the two, but one word -- "face" for "space" in the final stanza--has been changed by the time the poem appears in First Poems the next year. Radical revisions occur thirty years later when From the First Nine is published. TEN STUDENT POEMS [cover title] [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, ca. 1951] Off-white stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover. The subtitle on the cover reads "A Selection of Poetry Composed by Students in English 23-24, Advanced Composition, at Amherst College, 1944-1951". The pamphlet includes "The Forms of Death" by James Merrill, marking the poem's first appearance in book form. Accompanying the pamphlet is a three-page draft of the poem showing changes in title, dedication, and a few lines in the first section. More importantly, the worksheets include a second section, later abandoned. A subsequent draft in the Merrill Papers is dated 1946. The poem was apparently not collected elsewhere, although it did appear in a 1948 issue of Accent magazine, with the second section still intact. FIRST POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Edition limited to 990 numbered copies. This is copy 855. Maroon cloth over boards with author printed in blind on front cover, and Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. Off-white endpapers. White dust jacket printed in olive-green. Accompanied by the final typescript of the poems, some with revisions, and two pages of typescript notes about four of the poems. Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention. The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
James Merrill entered Amherst College, his father's alma mater, in 1943. His studies were interrupted by service in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1945. He returned to Amherst after his discharge and was graduated at age 20 with a B.A. degree summa cum laude in 1947. His undergraduate thesis was on metaphor in Proust, a copy of which is among his papers at Washington University.
An early appearance in Poetry magazine in 1946 was honored with the Oscar Blumenthal Prize in 1947, a very special achievement for an undergraduate. THE MEDUSA Volume I, Number I (Fall 1946) [all published] Edited by James Merrill and William Burford. Deep pink stapled wrappers printed in black. Four of James Merrill's poems appear in this magazine, which took the name The Medusa from a student organization at Amherst College, although it was published independently. The periodical includes work by members of the group and their guests; some of the pieces had appeared earlier in other publications. Contributors include Kimon Friar, Anais Nin, and Maya Deren as well as Merrill and Burford, the editors. The periodical is open to Merrill's poem, "The Black Swan." The text of the poem was unaltered in subsequent printings in The Black Swan (1946) and First Poems (1951) but changes have been made by the time of its appearance in From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 [1983]. The three other poems in the magazine are "The Broken Bowl", "From Morning into Morning", and "Medusa". THE BLACK SWAN AND OTHER POEMS Athens: Icaros, 1946. Limited to 100 numbered copies not for sale. This is copy 52. Presentation copy, with the Greek inscription facing the title poem translated by the author: "Of all my friends I have found you most a friend". Pale blue-grey sewn wrappers; cover title printed in black and red, featuring a black swan reflected in water; publisher's logo printed in black on rear cover; glassine dust jacket. Printed by M. Myrtidis in October 1946. This collection of twelve poems is dedicated to Kimon Friar, who introduced the young poet to a variety of modern writers while he was an undergraduate. Washington University is very fortunate to hold two copies of this book, one a gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. THE BIRTHDAY: A PLAY IN VERSE [No place: no publisher, 1947] Mimeographed sheets, on recto only, 14"x 8 1/2", 13 pp.; issued stapled in upper left corner. Accompanied by a photograph of a scene from the play, the Gift of Thomas Howkins. Merrill's play was performed at Kirby Theatre, Amherst College, May 22 and 23, 1947, when Merrill was a senior. The production was part of a one-act play competition. Washington University's copy of the play has "Charles", one of the character's names, written in the upper right corner of the first page; possibly this was the actor's copy. There are three changes in the text: one line is eliminated, and two words are altered. Comparison with the final, undated typescript in the Merrill Papers, shows that these changes were not made until production. It is thought that approximately 30 copies of the production text were prepared. TEN POETS ANTHOLOGY East Dorset, Vermont: Anthony Harrigan, Publisher, [ca. 1947] Limited to approximately 200 copies. Off-white wrappers with title printed in red on cover. James Merrill's contribution to this pamphlet is the poem, "The Formal Lovers", along with a previously unpublished autobiographical statement mentioning in part his receipt of the Irene Glascock Memorial Poetry Prize at Mt. Holyoke in 1946. Other contributors include Frederick Buechner and Richard Wilbur. TWENTY-ONE LYRICS [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, [1950] Blue-green stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover within a decorative border. Printed at The Vermont Printing Co., Brattleboro, Vermont. Gift of James Merrill This pamphlet, produced for the Humanities 1-2 classes at Amherst, includes Merrill's poem "The Broken Bowl", which had already appeared in his privately-printed collection, The Black Swan (1946). Textually, there are no changes between the two, but one word -- "face" for "space" in the final stanza--has been changed by the time the poem appears in First Poems the next year. Radical revisions occur thirty years later when From the First Nine is published. TEN STUDENT POEMS [cover title] [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, ca. 1951] Off-white stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover. The subtitle on the cover reads "A Selection of Poetry Composed by Students in English 23-24, Advanced Composition, at Amherst College, 1944-1951". The pamphlet includes "The Forms of Death" by James Merrill, marking the poem's first appearance in book form. Accompanying the pamphlet is a three-page draft of the poem showing changes in title, dedication, and a few lines in the first section. More importantly, the worksheets include a second section, later abandoned. A subsequent draft in the Merrill Papers is dated 1946. The poem was apparently not collected elsewhere, although it did appear in a 1948 issue of Accent magazine, with the second section still intact. FIRST POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Edition limited to 990 numbered copies. This is copy 855. Maroon cloth over boards with author printed in blind on front cover, and Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. Off-white endpapers. White dust jacket printed in olive-green. Accompanied by the final typescript of the poems, some with revisions, and two pages of typescript notes about four of the poems. Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention. The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
Four of James Merrill's poems appear in this magazine, which took the name The Medusa from a student organization at Amherst College, although it was published independently. The periodical includes work by members of the group and their guests; some of the pieces had appeared earlier in other publications. Contributors include Kimon Friar, Anais Nin, and Maya Deren as well as Merrill and Burford, the editors. The periodical is open to Merrill's poem, "The Black Swan." The text of the poem was unaltered in subsequent printings in The Black Swan (1946) and First Poems (1951) but changes have been made by the time of its appearance in From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 [1983]. The three other poems in the magazine are "The Broken Bowl", "From Morning into Morning", and "Medusa". THE BLACK SWAN AND OTHER POEMS Athens: Icaros, 1946. Limited to 100 numbered copies not for sale. This is copy 52. Presentation copy, with the Greek inscription facing the title poem translated by the author: "Of all my friends I have found you most a friend". Pale blue-grey sewn wrappers; cover title printed in black and red, featuring a black swan reflected in water; publisher's logo printed in black on rear cover; glassine dust jacket. Printed by M. Myrtidis in October 1946. This collection of twelve poems is dedicated to Kimon Friar, who introduced the young poet to a variety of modern writers while he was an undergraduate. Washington University is very fortunate to hold two copies of this book, one a gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. THE BIRTHDAY: A PLAY IN VERSE [No place: no publisher, 1947] Mimeographed sheets, on recto only, 14"x 8 1/2", 13 pp.; issued stapled in upper left corner. Accompanied by a photograph of a scene from the play, the Gift of Thomas Howkins. Merrill's play was performed at Kirby Theatre, Amherst College, May 22 and 23, 1947, when Merrill was a senior. The production was part of a one-act play competition. Washington University's copy of the play has "Charles", one of the character's names, written in the upper right corner of the first page; possibly this was the actor's copy. There are three changes in the text: one line is eliminated, and two words are altered. Comparison with the final, undated typescript in the Merrill Papers, shows that these changes were not made until production. It is thought that approximately 30 copies of the production text were prepared. TEN POETS ANTHOLOGY East Dorset, Vermont: Anthony Harrigan, Publisher, [ca. 1947] Limited to approximately 200 copies. Off-white wrappers with title printed in red on cover. James Merrill's contribution to this pamphlet is the poem, "The Formal Lovers", along with a previously unpublished autobiographical statement mentioning in part his receipt of the Irene Glascock Memorial Poetry Prize at Mt. Holyoke in 1946. Other contributors include Frederick Buechner and Richard Wilbur. TWENTY-ONE LYRICS [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, [1950] Blue-green stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover within a decorative border. Printed at The Vermont Printing Co., Brattleboro, Vermont. Gift of James Merrill This pamphlet, produced for the Humanities 1-2 classes at Amherst, includes Merrill's poem "The Broken Bowl", which had already appeared in his privately-printed collection, The Black Swan (1946). Textually, there are no changes between the two, but one word -- "face" for "space" in the final stanza--has been changed by the time the poem appears in First Poems the next year. Radical revisions occur thirty years later when From the First Nine is published. TEN STUDENT POEMS [cover title] [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, ca. 1951] Off-white stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover. The subtitle on the cover reads "A Selection of Poetry Composed by Students in English 23-24, Advanced Composition, at Amherst College, 1944-1951". The pamphlet includes "The Forms of Death" by James Merrill, marking the poem's first appearance in book form. Accompanying the pamphlet is a three-page draft of the poem showing changes in title, dedication, and a few lines in the first section. More importantly, the worksheets include a second section, later abandoned. A subsequent draft in the Merrill Papers is dated 1946. The poem was apparently not collected elsewhere, although it did appear in a 1948 issue of Accent magazine, with the second section still intact. FIRST POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Edition limited to 990 numbered copies. This is copy 855. Maroon cloth over boards with author printed in blind on front cover, and Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. Off-white endpapers. White dust jacket printed in olive-green. Accompanied by the final typescript of the poems, some with revisions, and two pages of typescript notes about four of the poems. Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention. The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
This collection of twelve poems is dedicated to Kimon Friar, who introduced the young poet to a variety of modern writers while he was an undergraduate. Washington University is very fortunate to hold two copies of this book, one a gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. THE BIRTHDAY: A PLAY IN VERSE [No place: no publisher, 1947] Mimeographed sheets, on recto only, 14"x 8 1/2", 13 pp.; issued stapled in upper left corner. Accompanied by a photograph of a scene from the play, the Gift of Thomas Howkins. Merrill's play was performed at Kirby Theatre, Amherst College, May 22 and 23, 1947, when Merrill was a senior. The production was part of a one-act play competition. Washington University's copy of the play has "Charles", one of the character's names, written in the upper right corner of the first page; possibly this was the actor's copy. There are three changes in the text: one line is eliminated, and two words are altered. Comparison with the final, undated typescript in the Merrill Papers, shows that these changes were not made until production. It is thought that approximately 30 copies of the production text were prepared. TEN POETS ANTHOLOGY East Dorset, Vermont: Anthony Harrigan, Publisher, [ca. 1947] Limited to approximately 200 copies. Off-white wrappers with title printed in red on cover. James Merrill's contribution to this pamphlet is the poem, "The Formal Lovers", along with a previously unpublished autobiographical statement mentioning in part his receipt of the Irene Glascock Memorial Poetry Prize at Mt. Holyoke in 1946. Other contributors include Frederick Buechner and Richard Wilbur. TWENTY-ONE LYRICS [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, [1950] Blue-green stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover within a decorative border. Printed at The Vermont Printing Co., Brattleboro, Vermont. Gift of James Merrill This pamphlet, produced for the Humanities 1-2 classes at Amherst, includes Merrill's poem "The Broken Bowl", which had already appeared in his privately-printed collection, The Black Swan (1946). Textually, there are no changes between the two, but one word -- "face" for "space" in the final stanza--has been changed by the time the poem appears in First Poems the next year. Radical revisions occur thirty years later when From the First Nine is published. TEN STUDENT POEMS [cover title] [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, ca. 1951] Off-white stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover. The subtitle on the cover reads "A Selection of Poetry Composed by Students in English 23-24, Advanced Composition, at Amherst College, 1944-1951". The pamphlet includes "The Forms of Death" by James Merrill, marking the poem's first appearance in book form. Accompanying the pamphlet is a three-page draft of the poem showing changes in title, dedication, and a few lines in the first section. More importantly, the worksheets include a second section, later abandoned. A subsequent draft in the Merrill Papers is dated 1946. The poem was apparently not collected elsewhere, although it did appear in a 1948 issue of Accent magazine, with the second section still intact. FIRST POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Edition limited to 990 numbered copies. This is copy 855. Maroon cloth over boards with author printed in blind on front cover, and Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. Off-white endpapers. White dust jacket printed in olive-green. Accompanied by the final typescript of the poems, some with revisions, and two pages of typescript notes about four of the poems. Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention. The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
Merrill's play was performed at Kirby Theatre, Amherst College, May 22 and 23, 1947, when Merrill was a senior. The production was part of a one-act play competition. Washington University's copy of the play has "Charles", one of the character's names, written in the upper right corner of the first page; possibly this was the actor's copy. There are three changes in the text: one line is eliminated, and two words are altered. Comparison with the final, undated typescript in the Merrill Papers, shows that these changes were not made until production.
It is thought that approximately 30 copies of the production text were prepared. TEN POETS ANTHOLOGY East Dorset, Vermont: Anthony Harrigan, Publisher, [ca. 1947] Limited to approximately 200 copies. Off-white wrappers with title printed in red on cover. James Merrill's contribution to this pamphlet is the poem, "The Formal Lovers", along with a previously unpublished autobiographical statement mentioning in part his receipt of the Irene Glascock Memorial Poetry Prize at Mt. Holyoke in 1946. Other contributors include Frederick Buechner and Richard Wilbur. TWENTY-ONE LYRICS [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, [1950] Blue-green stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover within a decorative border. Printed at The Vermont Printing Co., Brattleboro, Vermont. Gift of James Merrill This pamphlet, produced for the Humanities 1-2 classes at Amherst, includes Merrill's poem "The Broken Bowl", which had already appeared in his privately-printed collection, The Black Swan (1946). Textually, there are no changes between the two, but one word -- "face" for "space" in the final stanza--has been changed by the time the poem appears in First Poems the next year. Radical revisions occur thirty years later when From the First Nine is published. TEN STUDENT POEMS [cover title] [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, ca. 1951] Off-white stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover. The subtitle on the cover reads "A Selection of Poetry Composed by Students in English 23-24, Advanced Composition, at Amherst College, 1944-1951". The pamphlet includes "The Forms of Death" by James Merrill, marking the poem's first appearance in book form. Accompanying the pamphlet is a three-page draft of the poem showing changes in title, dedication, and a few lines in the first section. More importantly, the worksheets include a second section, later abandoned. A subsequent draft in the Merrill Papers is dated 1946. The poem was apparently not collected elsewhere, although it did appear in a 1948 issue of Accent magazine, with the second section still intact. FIRST POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Edition limited to 990 numbered copies. This is copy 855. Maroon cloth over boards with author printed in blind on front cover, and Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. Off-white endpapers. White dust jacket printed in olive-green. Accompanied by the final typescript of the poems, some with revisions, and two pages of typescript notes about four of the poems. Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention. The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
James Merrill's contribution to this pamphlet is the poem, "The Formal Lovers", along with a previously unpublished autobiographical statement mentioning in part his receipt of the Irene Glascock Memorial Poetry Prize at Mt. Holyoke in 1946. Other contributors include Frederick Buechner and Richard Wilbur. TWENTY-ONE LYRICS [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, [1950] Blue-green stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover within a decorative border. Printed at The Vermont Printing Co., Brattleboro, Vermont. Gift of James Merrill This pamphlet, produced for the Humanities 1-2 classes at Amherst, includes Merrill's poem "The Broken Bowl", which had already appeared in his privately-printed collection, The Black Swan (1946). Textually, there are no changes between the two, but one word -- "face" for "space" in the final stanza--has been changed by the time the poem appears in First Poems the next year. Radical revisions occur thirty years later when From the First Nine is published. TEN STUDENT POEMS [cover title] [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, ca. 1951] Off-white stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover. The subtitle on the cover reads "A Selection of Poetry Composed by Students in English 23-24, Advanced Composition, at Amherst College, 1944-1951". The pamphlet includes "The Forms of Death" by James Merrill, marking the poem's first appearance in book form. Accompanying the pamphlet is a three-page draft of the poem showing changes in title, dedication, and a few lines in the first section. More importantly, the worksheets include a second section, later abandoned. A subsequent draft in the Merrill Papers is dated 1946. The poem was apparently not collected elsewhere, although it did appear in a 1948 issue of Accent magazine, with the second section still intact. FIRST POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Edition limited to 990 numbered copies. This is copy 855. Maroon cloth over boards with author printed in blind on front cover, and Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. Off-white endpapers. White dust jacket printed in olive-green. Accompanied by the final typescript of the poems, some with revisions, and two pages of typescript notes about four of the poems. Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention. The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
This pamphlet, produced for the Humanities 1-2 classes at Amherst, includes Merrill's poem "The Broken Bowl", which had already appeared in his privately-printed collection, The Black Swan (1946). Textually, there are no changes between the two, but one word -- "face" for "space" in the final stanza--has been changed by the time the poem appears in First Poems the next year. Radical revisions occur thirty years later when From the First Nine is published. TEN STUDENT POEMS [cover title] [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, ca. 1951] Off-white stapled wrappers, with title in black on front cover. The subtitle on the cover reads "A Selection of Poetry Composed by Students in English 23-24, Advanced Composition, at Amherst College, 1944-1951". The pamphlet includes "The Forms of Death" by James Merrill, marking the poem's first appearance in book form. Accompanying the pamphlet is a three-page draft of the poem showing changes in title, dedication, and a few lines in the first section. More importantly, the worksheets include a second section, later abandoned. A subsequent draft in the Merrill Papers is dated 1946. The poem was apparently not collected elsewhere, although it did appear in a 1948 issue of Accent magazine, with the second section still intact. FIRST POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Edition limited to 990 numbered copies. This is copy 855. Maroon cloth over boards with author printed in blind on front cover, and Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. Off-white endpapers. White dust jacket printed in olive-green. Accompanied by the final typescript of the poems, some with revisions, and two pages of typescript notes about four of the poems. Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention. The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
The subtitle on the cover reads "A Selection of Poetry Composed by Students in English 23-24, Advanced Composition, at Amherst College, 1944-1951". The pamphlet includes "The Forms of Death" by James Merrill, marking the poem's first appearance in book form.
Accompanying the pamphlet is a three-page draft of the poem showing changes in title, dedication, and a few lines in the first section. More importantly, the worksheets include a second section, later abandoned. A subsequent draft in the Merrill Papers is dated 1946. The poem was apparently not collected elsewhere, although it did appear in a 1948 issue of Accent magazine, with the second section still intact. FIRST POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Edition limited to 990 numbered copies. This is copy 855. Maroon cloth over boards with author printed in blind on front cover, and Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. Off-white endpapers. White dust jacket printed in olive-green. Accompanied by the final typescript of the poems, some with revisions, and two pages of typescript notes about four of the poems. Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention. The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
Merrill's first trade book is dedicated to Frederick Buechner, his friend from Lawrenceville days. First Poems retains all the poems most worth keeping from The Black Swan; the book received a large number of reviews and a great deal of favorable critical attention.
The final typescript is open to "Foliage of Vision" accompanied by Merrill's formal source notes about the poems, which were prepared at an unidentified time and apparently unpublished. MANDRAKE Vol. II, No. 8 (Spring and Summer 1952) Edited by Arthur Boyars. Gift of James Merrill with his pencilled annotations Accompanied by James Merrill's Notebook, labelled "August 28 1950 - 14 June 1951 Venice-Rome", and poetry worksheets, 5 pp. Gift of James Merrill These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
These pieces afford an excellent opportunity to study the development of one poem, "The Charioteer of Delphi". The James Merrill Papers hold 13 of his notebooks, dating from about 1947 to 1964. The earliest lines for the poem show up in July 1950 in the notebook preceding this one; some of the drafts of "Charioteer of Delphi" are dated later that fall and winter. Subsequent re-writings of the poem may be studied in the worksheets also shown here. The poem was first published in the British magazine, Mandrake, in 1952, and James Merrill's copy bears several revisions in his hand, which appear in the poem when it is collected seven years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. FOLDER, Volume I, Number I (Winter 1953) New York: Tiber press, 1953. Limited to 500 numbered copies. This is copy 320. Loose sheets, some folded, laid in a printed folder. Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
Merrill has contributed two short poems to the first issue of this periodical: "Water Boiling" and "Night Laundry" under the heading "Two Chores". These poems later appear in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems under the heading "Three Chores" along with the third, "Italian Lesson." Other contributors include John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. "Night Laundry" is also included in Merrill's first British collection, Selected Poems, published in London in 1961. SHORT STORIES Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1954 Limited to 210 numbered copies, 60 for sale and 150 for friends of the poet and the printer. This is copy 51, inscribed to William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes, September 1954. Cockerell sewn wrappers, with white paper label printed in black. Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
Of these nine poems, dedicated to David Jackson and impeccably printed by Claude Fredericks, five are first appearances. All but one of the poems, "Gothic Novel", are included five years later in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems. Washington University is fortunate to have a second inscribed copy of Short Stories, given to the Library by Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer in 1982. A BIRTHDAY CAKE FOR DAVID FROM JAMEY, JIMMY & CLAUDE WITH GREETINGS FERVID Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1955. Limited to four copies, each imprinted with the recipient's name. This is James Merrill's copy. Gift of James Merrill Broadside, 8 3/4" x 6 3/4". Off-white sheet printed in black. This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
This is the only appearance of the poem, published in celebration of David Jackson's birthday. Drafts of the poem are included in the James Merrill Papers held at Washington University. PLAYBOOK: FIVE PLAYS FOR A NEW THEATRE [Norfolk, Connecticut]: New Directions, [1956] Black cloth, title and publisher in silver on spine; dust jacket in blue and brown. ARTISTS' THEATRE FESTIVAL/1968. Unpaged program. Stiff white wrappers printed in deep pink. "The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz. Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination." The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
"The Immortal Husband", James Merrill's three-act play, was first produced by John Bernard Myers in association with The Artists' Theatre at the Theatre de Lys in New York on February 14, 1955, directed by Herbert Machiz.
Among many admiring reviewers, Tennessee Williams commented: "James Merrill is my favorite young American Poet and he has written a play which is pure poetry plus theatre, a rare and magical combination."
The play was revived in the summer of 1968 when the Artists' Theatre was in residence at Southampton College. The festival catalog, open here to Richard Hayes' piece on Merrill's play, entitled "The Imagination of Time", is preceded by John Bernard Myers' interesting essay about the founding and development of the Artists' Theatre, which was dedicated to presenting "plays by writers who were primarily poets and serious thinkers." THE SERAGLIO New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. First edition. Blue paper over boards with red cloth spine; title printed in blind on front cover, Borzoi logo in blind on rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge blue; white dust jacket printed in red, black and yellow, with a photograph of James Merrill by Rollie McKenna on the back wrapper. THE SERAGLIO London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. First English edition. Navy blue cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers. Dust jacket printed in bright pink and black. Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
Other than the narrative sketches published during his school days, The Seraglio, Merrill's first novel, is his first published fiction. The novel, which is partly autobiographical in its general outline, has been praised for its skilled handling of point of view, its exquisite attention to setting, and its impressive descriptive power. The jacket copy on the United States edition quotes Truman Capote: "Happily, these excellent accents and images are used to examine, from a convincingly Inside point of view, an atmosphere and a theme seldom described in serious American fiction: a universe of high-powered finance, high voltage sensibility." VOICES: A JOURNAL OF POETRY Number 166 (May-August, 1958) Edited by Harold Vinal Gift of James Merrill According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
According to a cover note, James Merrill served as Editorial Assistant for this issue. He also contributed a book review, signed only with his initials, entitled "The Relic, Promises and Poems". The four authors reviewed are Robert Hillyer, Robert Penn Warren, William Jay Smith and William Meredith. To his admirers' regret, James Merrill has published very little criticism. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First edition. Pink cloth; author's name in blind on upper front cover and Borzoi logo in blind on lower rear cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; top edge light blue. White dust jacket printed in purple, with text of poem, "Marsyas", from the book, reproduced on the back wrapper. THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE AND OTHER POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1970. First Revised Edition on copyright page; New and Enlarged Edition on wrappers. Stiff white wrappers, printed in lavender and medium and dark brown. A second printing, so indicated on the title page and verso, occurred in February 1977. In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
In the revised edition, three new poems have been added, "The Day of the Eclipse", "Walking All Night", and "The Power Station", previously uncollected but written during the same period. One poem, "Saint" has been deleted. This second major collection of Merrill's poems -- described as a watershed volume and exuberantly well-received -- includes "Voices from the Other World", his earliest (ca. 1955) poem involving the realm of the Ouija board. ANGEL Stonington, Connecticut: [no publisher], 1959. First edition. Limited to 180 copies. Broadside, 7" x 3 1/2". Pink leaf printed in red. "Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
"Angel" was published by James Merrill as a private Christmas greeting. ARTISTS' THEATRE. FOUR PLAYS Edited by Herbert Machiz. New York: Grove Press, Inc./London: Evergreen Books Ltd., [1960] Gift of William Matheson in memory of Charles Winston. Stiff white wrappers printed in black, red and lavender. Evergreen original E-221. The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later. Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
The volume includes James Merrill's one-act play "The Bait", first produced by the Artists' Theatre in New York City in May 1953; the play was presented by the BBC on its Third Programme two years later.
Herbert Machiz, who directed all the plays in their premier performances, contributes an introduction. The three other plays are "Try! Try!" by Frank O'Hara, "The Heroes" by John Ashbery, and "Absalom" by Lionel Abel. COROT 1796-1875. AN EXHIBITION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND GRAPHIC ARTS. [Chicago]: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960. Stiff white wrappers, printed in black with a multi-color reproduction of the Corot painting "View of Genoa" on the front cover. Accompanied by autograph and typescript drafts of the essay, 48 pages. Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
Merrill has contributed an introductory essay to the exhibit catalog entitled "Notes on Corot," which opens with the statement: "The writer will always envy the painter." FROM A NOTEBOOK [no place: no publisher, 1960] Limited to 120 copies. This copy from the James Dickey Collection. Broadside, 7"x 3 1/2". White card stock printed in black. Published by James Merrill as a private New Year Greeting for 1961. Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
Washington University is fortunate to have two copies of this fragile piece. Interestingly, our second copy bears evidence of the date of publication. Accompanying the poem is the envelope in which the greeting was mailed to his good friend, Thomas Howkins, postmarked from Italy November 26, 1960. SELECTED POEMS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1961. First edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; gold stamped phoenix on front cover; title, author and publishers' initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; vivid yellow dust jacket printed in reddish-brown and black, featuring the phoenix logo. This copy signed by James Merrill on the front free endpaper. The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection. Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
The Merrill Papers include an interesting correspondence with the publishers in which the poems to be included are discussed. The editors involved were Norah Smallwood and C. Day Lewis although James Merrill made the final selection.
Coming as it does between his two major U.S. collections, Selected Poems is made up of poems from The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Water Street, with five earlier poems from First Poems, some of which have been revised, including a variant final line in The Black Swan. One poem, "Landscape with Torrent" appears to be uncollected elsewhere. POET'S CHOICE Edited by Paul Engle and Joseph Langland. New York: The Dial Press, 1962 Dark red cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; orange endpapers; cream dust jacket printed in black, orange and gold. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem, "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", 6 pp. The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work." The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines: There are moments when speech is but a mouth pressed Lightly and humbly against the angel's hand. WATER STREET POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1962. First edition. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in green and blue, with no flap copy. To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
The editors asked the most celebrated living poets writing in English to name the poem from their own work that meant the most to them and to give reasons for their choice. James Merrill selected "The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace", which is dedicated to his good friend, Hans Lodeizen, the Dutch poet who died of leukemia in 1950 at age 26, two weeks after James Merrill had visited him in the hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was my first deeply felt death," Merrill explains. "As the inevitable verses took shape, strictness of form seemed at last beside the point .... The poem still surprises me, as much by its clarification of what I was feeling, as by its foreknowledge of where I needed to go next, in my work."
The final poem in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems is "A Dedication" to Hans Lodeizen, which ends with the eloquent lines:
To meet increasing demand, Water Street had a second printing in December 1962 and was up to a fifth printing in February 1980, all in paperback. Water Street is so titled after the street in Stonington, Connecticut on which Merrill and his friend, David Jackson, have lived since 1956. In 1959 they began living in Greece for part of each year. It has been pointed out that the all-important autobiographical concerns of many of Merrill's poems are especially apparent in this collection, which begins with the ambitious long poem, "An Urban Convalescence", reflecting on life in New York City, and ending with "A Tenancy", about a more settled life in the Stonington house. LE SORELLE BRONTE: OPERA IN QUATRI ATTI di Bernard de Zogheb New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963. Limited to 300 copies. Lavender stapled wrappers printed in black. Gift of James Merrill, with his autograph corrections in the text. As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
As was first pointed out by Jack Hagstrom and George Bixby in their very useful checklist of James Merrill's works published in American Book Collector (November/ December 1983), this piece has often been wrongly attributed to Merrill. The libretto was reissued in 1969 in Milan, by Adelphi. The format is much the same, including the frontispiece and setting, which captures some of Merrill's corrections to the 1963 text. The green wrappers are sewn in this reissue and cover text is greatly expanded. The unidentified Foreword is in Italian and according to a December 1980 note from Merrill, laid in: "They've translated none of my introduction beyond an odd sentence or two." THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT [Athens: Christos Christou Press, 1963] Limited to fifty copies, none for sale. Dark blue stapled wrappers, with white label printed in black on upper cover. Gift of James Merrill. In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem. The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
In approximately 20 copies, James Merrill has added watercolors of a moon on the first page and a sun on the last page of text, a copy of which is also held by Washington University, the gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. In many respects, this long poem in five parts is at the heart of his next collection, Nights and Days, published three years later. Judith Moffett, in her book James Merrill, provides an especially useful discussion of the poem.
The Merrill Papers hold nearly 150 pages of worksheets connected with this poem, nearly all heavily revised. The poem's first appearance was in The New Yorker and the galley proofs for that printing are also shown here, with Merrill's late revisions and typographical corrections in pencil. VIOLENT PASTORAL [Cambridge, Massachusetts]: The Adams House & Lowell House Printers, 1965 Limited to 100 numbered copies. This is copy 12 Single white sheet folded twice and sewn into unprinted greenish blue wrappers. Facing the poem is a photograph of clouds by W. Krupsaw. Gift of James Merrill, with his pencilled note on title: "(for the air cooled room)". This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
This is the first appearance of "Violent Pastoral", collected seven months later in Nights and Days. 1939: AN AMERICAN WOMAN EXPLORES THE ESTATE OF FRIENDS WHO HAVE FLED FRANCE [Cambridge]: Lowell-Adams House Printers, 1965. Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 50 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 35. Broadside, 15" x 10". Single white leaf printed in black; the block-print is in orange. This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
This broadside publication is the first printing of the poem, later collected in Nights and Days without revision, but with a change in capitalization in line 30. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK New York: Atheneum, 1965 First edition. This copy inscribed to a friend and dated March 1965. Grey cloth with black cloth spine; title printed in blind on upper front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; off-white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring a photograph of Greek statuary. THE (DIBLOS) NOTEBOOK London: Chatto & Windus, 1965 First English edition, sheets printed in the USA Grey textured paper over boards; author, title and publisher printed in red on spine; white dust jacket printed in red and black, featuring the same photograph, but with different flap copy. Accompanied by the final typescript marked for printing, 120 pp. The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
The (Diblos) Notebook is an extraordinary work of fiction and its experimental ingenuity and arresting brilliance have been greatly admired. One of the most useful introductory discussions of the novel may be found in Ross Labrie's critical volume, James Merrill. Prof. Labrie's study benefited from research in the Merrill Papers, which include interesting preliminary notes prepared before writing got underway. The printer's typescript, seen here, documents several interesting late changes. The (Diblos) Notebook was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. HOI CHILIES KAI E DEUTERA NUCHTA [Greek letter] Translated by Vassili Vassilikos Athens,1966 First translation of the poems into Greek. Limited to 300 copies. Gift of James Merrill, with pencilled annotations and a note to Mona Van Duyn laid in. Stiff grey wrappers printed in black. The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
The collection includes "The Thousand and Second Night", "The Smile", "Urban Convalescence", "Water Hyacinth", "To a Butterfly", "Roger Clay's Proposal", "Mirror", "The Broken Home", "Violent Pastoral", "Days of 1964", and a biographical sketch. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1966. First edition. Issued simultaneously in stiff paper wrappers. Navy blue cloth; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; purple endpapers; white dust jacket printed in purple and black, no text on flaps. NIGHTS AND DAYS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1980. Seventh printing. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black NIGHTS AND DAYS [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1966. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Dark orange paper over boards; Phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white dust jacket printed in dark pink featuring the Phoenix motif. To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure." The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
To keep up with demand, Nights and Days had a second printing in March 1967 and had achieved a seventh printing by February 1980. The collection of poems was honored with the National Book Award in 1967. The distinguished critic David Kalstone has called the book "the classic Merrill volume--jaunty, penetrating and secure."
The English edition drops three poems that appear in the American edition and adds seven new poems. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONIES, MARCH 8, 1967 [New York: no publisher, 1967] Photocopied typescript, one sheet, quoting the Citation of the Judges and James Merrill's Acceptance Remarks. Accompanied by the printed program. The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
The 1967 National Book Award in Poetry was awarded to James Merrill's Nights & Days, in the words of the judges, "for his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; for his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." The judges were W. H. Auden, James Dickey and Howard Nemerov. The ceremonies took place at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey delivered the opening address. AMHERST COLLEGE PROGRAM OF THE CXLVII COMMENCEMENT [Amherst, Massachusetts]: Amherst College, 1968. Program, photographs and Citation from President Calvin H. Plimpton. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by his alma mater, Amherst College, on June 7,1968. ANOTHER AUGUST [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by George Lockwood. Limited to 150 numbered copies signed by author and artist. This is copy 8. Broadside, 19 3/4" x 23 7/8" Single white sheet printed in brown, with color lithograph in various shades of brown and blue. Printer's device in blind lower left. Colophon on verso. The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
The poem "Another August" is first collected in The Fire Screen (1969). 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott. Limited to 90 copies printed vertically with text below plate, signed by artist and author. This is copy 35. Broadside, 22 1/4" x 10". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green. 16. IX. 65 [Boston: Impressions Workshop Inc., 1968] Illustrated by Laurence Scott.Limited to 10 Roman-numeral copies printed horizontally with text facing left, signed by artist and author. This is copy VII. Broadside, 14 1/2" x 20 1/2". Single white sheet printed in rust and light green; plate printed in brown and dark brown, numbered and signed in pencil. Printer's device in blind lower left of sheet. Colophon on verso printed in light green, with the following printed in brown in right top half: "16. IX. 65/a poem and a print/James Merrill/Laurence Scott". This publication marks the first appearance of the poem, which is dedicated to James Merrill's Greek friends, Vassili and Mimi Vassilikos. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Volume 39, no. 4, (Summer 1969) Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, Brown Hall Lounge, Washington University, St. Louis, November 1, 1968. Audiotape recording of James Merrill reading his poems, January Hall, Washington University, St. Louis, November 17, 1971 and in the Women's Building, December 3, 1971. The Department of Special Collections in John M. Olin Library has been recording the poetry and fiction readings of faculty, students and guests held at Washington University since the mid-1960's. In the fall of 1968, James Merrill was one of six authors invited by the Department of English for periods of three to four weeks as part of the Visiting Writers Program. The other five participants were Robert Coover, James Dickey, Herbert Gold, William H. Gass, and Richard Howard. The 1968 poetry recording was made at that time. An article on the program, "Writers in Residence", appeared in the University's magazine the following summer, in which seven stanzas from his poem "An Urban Convalescence" were published. James Merrill returned to the University November 15-December 3, 1971 as Visiting Hurst Professor, at which time the other two recordings were made. THE FIRE SCREEN New York: Atheneum, 1969 First edition Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red and black. Accompanied by the galley proofs, corrected in the author's and copy editor's hands. 42 galleys. THE FIRESCREEN [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1970 First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo in gold on front cover; title, author, and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; off-white endpapers; white dust jacket printed in black and bright pink. This book is dedicated to David Jackson. The galley proofs are open to the poem "Mornings in a New House", which may be viewed in some respects as the title poem of the collection, with its meditation on the figures in a firescreen. In the galley, James Merrill has made revisions in the footnote to the poem. FIVE POEMS [no place: no publisher, 1971] Designed by Robert Williams with drawings by Virgil Burnett. Limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the illustrator and the authors. This is copy 6. Portfolio of five broadsides with illustrated title leaf, 18" x 12 1/2". Cream leaves printed in black with author and title printed variously in blue (Merrill), red, yellow, purple and green, laid into a grey folded envelope with a cream label printed in grey and black. A separate printing of the label with the copyright and permission information added is laid in. This portfolio marks the first appearance of James Merrill's poem "Crocheted Curtain." The other contributors are John Hollander, Daryl Hine, Carolyn Kizer and Richard Howard. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & LETTERS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS CEREMONIAL, NEW YORK, 1971 Program and related pieces. James Merrill was elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department in Literature in 1971. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS St. Louis: [privately printed], 1971. First edition, first state. Limited to 26 copies. Photocopied typescript, 38 pp., stapled into yellow sheets with title on cover; a streak of yellow has been added by hand across the title on the title page. The second state of the cover consists of heavier and darker paper, unprinted. James Merrill privately produced this collection for friends while serving as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in November 1971. The collection is comprised of 59 poems left out of previous trade books. The title and the rationale are explained in a prefatory paragraph: "Yellowed, brittle with reproach, these of mine are felt, this rainy weekend, to have deserved more than the pauper's ditch of a bottom drawer or dispersal in the pages of twenty magazines." The original dates of creation, from 1946-1971, are indicated at the end of each poem, affording an unusual and meaningful way to read and enjoy poems that might otherwise have been overlooked. FOR W. H. AUDEN, FEBRUARY 21, 1972 Edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor. New York: Random House, [1972] Limited to 500 copies. Stiff white wrappers printed in cream and dark blue-green; title and editors and publisher's logo on front cover and spine; acetate dust wrapper. This collection of tributes from friends was produced on the occasion of Auden's 65th Birthday. James Merrill has contributed a new poem, "Table Talk." AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY Edited, with Introduction, by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [1972] First Edition. Sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Blue cloth over boards; title, editors and publisher printed in gold on spine; avocado end papers; white dust jacket printed in avocado and black. Accompanied by worksheet for the poem "Vigil", 1 page. This anthology includes James Merrill's translations of five poems by Cecilia Meireles. The Portuguese original is printed facing the English translation. Comparison of the worksheet for the poem, "Vigil", with the final version shows that additional changes have occurred by the time of publication. The James Merrill Papers hold a variety of his translations of the work of others, including poems by Apollinaire, Hans Lodeizen, Montale, Rilke and Vassili Vassilikos. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1972. First edition. Natural linen cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; mottled lavender endpapers; top edge red; mottled lavender dust jacket printed in purple and red. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS [London]: Chatto & Windus, 1973. First English edition. Phoenix Living Poets Series Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in blue and yellow with an abstract design in yellow and various shades of blue on front cover. BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1979. Fourth printing, March 1979 Stiff white wrappers printed in bright blue and deep pink. James Merrill, for Braving the Elements, was awarded the Bollingen Prize by Yale "for his wit and delight in language, his exceptional craft." The book takes its title from a line in the poem "Dreams about Clothes". Several poems in the collection are centered on the poet's residence in the Southwest and some also return to persistent themes arising from his childhood, especially "Days of 1935". TWO POEMS FROM THE CUPOLA AND THE SUMMER PEOPLE [London]: Chatto and Windus/The Hogarth Press, [1972] First edition, review copy. Publisher's slip laid in noting publication date of August 10, 1972. Phoenix Living Poets Series. Brick orange textured paper over boards; phoenix logo printed in gold on front cover; title, author and publisher's initials printed in gold on spine; white endpapers; all edges white; white dust jacket printed in pink and black (Identical to first edition). "The Summer People" was first collected in the American edition of The Fire Screen (1969) but was omitted from the English edition, published in 1970. "From the Cupola" appeared first in Poetry magazine in December 1965 and was collected in the American edition of Nights and Days (1966) but again omitted from the English edition, also published in 1966. These two long poems are published together here for the first and only time. THE POET'S STORY, Edited by Howard Moss New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc./London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, [1973] First edition. Blue cloth over boards; editor, title and publisher in silver on spine; white dust jacket printed in black, grey and yellow. Accompanied by three autograph and typescript drafts of "The Driver", 45 pp. This collection of short stories by American poets who had not published short fiction outside of periodicals, includes James Merrill's "The Driver", first published in Partisan Review (Fall 1962). YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, lettered issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies not for sale, signed by the author. This is copy U. Six oblong off-white sheets folded and sewn into stiff manila wrappers covered with dark blue paper decorated with gold fleur de lys, folded at the foredges; white label printed in black on front cover. Designed and printed at the Ferguson Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. YANNINA New York: The Phoenix Book Shop, 1973 First edition, numbered issue. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 72. Same physical description as lettered issue. This important long poem, dedicated to Stephen Yenser, first appeared in The Saturday Review and was later collected in Divine Comedies. The two background notes to the text are printed here at the end of the poem. David Kalstone's interview with James Merrill, "The Poet, Private", published in the Saturday Review (December 2, 1972) provides many useful insights into the making of the poem. FIVE INSCRIPTIONS Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Pomegranate Press, 1974. Illustrated by Karyl Klop. Limited to 100 numbered copies signed by the author. There were also 80 numbered copies apparently signed only by the artist. This is copy 20. Broadside, 19" x 12". Light tan leaf printed in black and blue. This broadside presents for the first time five brief poems, mostly composed in 1971. These are later collected in the 1984 volume Occasions & Inscriptions. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, cloth issue, limited to 50 numbered and signed copies. This is an unnumbered publisher's copy, inscribed by James Merrill. Black cloth over boards, with title and author printed in gold on cover and title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; yellow sheets and yellow endpapers. Issued without a dust jacket. THE YELLOW PAGES: 59 POEMS Cambridge, Massachusetts: Temple Bar Bookshop, 1974. First edition, paper issue, limited to 750 [sic] copies. Yellow wrappers, printed in brown, reproducing the bookstore section of the Boston telephone directory yellow pages. In 1974 Temple Bar Bookshop brought out substantially the same collection of poems as the privately printed 1971 edition of the same title. There are three states of the paper issue. The first lacks the limitation statement found in the cloth issue; the second bears a pasted-in notice of limitation on the last page of text; the third and final state has a printed notice laid into the front of the book citing the limitation. There is a discrepancy between the number of copies cited by the publisher. In the cloth issue, it is stated that 750 softbound copies have been produced; in the notices in the paper copies, the figure 800 is given. Washington University holds the correspondence with the publisher, Eugene O'Neil and his associates, and the various editorial and proof material that led to the complete book, including another photocopy of the 1971 private issue of the poems, revised and annotated by James Merrill to show the original place of publication. Two poems have been dropped and two others--one early, one late--have been substituted. Omitted are "Morning in the Grand Style" and "The Formal Lovers", which had appeared in The Black Swan (1946). In their places are "Europa" (1947) and "The Catch-All" (1972), written after the private publication. For consistency, a title (the first line) has been assigned to one untitled poem, "We Walk in Woods". REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE/THE QUESTION OF CUPCAKE By John Hollander. New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Maroon cloth over boards; title and author printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine; dark grey endpapers; top edge dark blue; issued in dust jacket, lacking in this copy. John Hollander's long poem has as one of its characters, "Image", to whom many of the messages are addressed. "Image" was the code name for James Merrill, who has contributed the final four "Notes" on page 74 of the text. These notes are included in the collection, Occasions & Inscriptions (1984) under the heading, "Four Transmissions in Code, Image to Cupcake". DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1976. First edition. Deep grey cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; orange endpapers; top edge orange; white dust jacket printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1977. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. DIVINE COMEDIES: POEMS New York: Atheneum, 1977. Second printing, first paperback issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in orange-red, black and silver. Accompanied by worksheets for the poem "Lost in Translation", 60 pp. Divine Comedies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977. The book is a stunning accomplishment in every respect and may be viewed as a transitional collection to the monumental trilogy yet to come. The second half of the volume is taken up with "The Book of Ephraim", the first book of the forthcoming epic; the first half is comprised of nine poems, most quite long, including the wonderful puzzle-piece, "Lost in Translation", dedicated to Richard Howard. METAMORPHOSIS OF 741 Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press, 1977. Limited to 440 copies. This is copy 169. Series: Pawlet 4. Six white sheets and two leaves sewn into stiff white wrappers, with title printed in black on upper front cover. Blue and black illustration on title-leaf. Issued in a gummed manila envelope with series and title printed in blue. Printed by Claude Fredericks and David Beeken. At the time of this printing, "Metamorphosis of 741" was described as a section from a still untitled larger poem. The text is in fact the sections 3.3-3.5, Book 3 of Mirabell: Books of Number, although the section has been revised, in a few lines substantially, by the time of its final publication. Banyan Press books are impeccable and austere, exemplifying the printer Claude Fredericks' stated views of printing: "What makes good printing is a simplicity in design, consistency in execution, and a relentless solicitude for each and every detail." A SEANCE WITH W.H. AUDEN FROM A WORK IN PROGRESS [Chicago]: Lovell & Whyte, 1978. Illustrated by Marion Brody. Limited to 75 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 71. Broadside, 35" x 23". Off-white leaf printed in black, red and yellow. In greatly reduced size, an uncolored version of this broadside was issued by the publisher as a pre-publication advertising mailing piece. The text is taken from the first section of Book 9 of Mirabell: Books of Number. from MIRABELL [Charlottesville, Virginia]: University of Virginia, 1978. Limited to 100 numbered copies, of which 1-52 have varying typographical errors. This is copy 92. A few early copies were signed by the author. Broadside, 16 5/8" x 8 1/2". Light tan leaf printed in black. The colophon calls for Ragston paper but other stock was used. The text is the whole of the ninth section of Book 2 of Mirabell: Books of Number, without revision. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER New York: Atheneum, 1978. First edition. This is Elizabeth Bishop's copy dated November 28th, 1978, with her annotations. Maroon cloth over boards; author and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in gold on spine; medium blue endpapers; top edge gold. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red, featuring a drawing of a peacock. MIRABELL: BOOKS OF NUMBER Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. First English edition. Printed in the USA. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue-green, pale blue and red, featuring the same peacock, but facing right. Mirabell continues the magnificent trilogy begun with "The Book of Ephraim", published two years earlier in Divine Comedies. This part of the epic focuses on the relationship between science and culture, with powerful contemplation of nuclear weaponry in particular. In an interview with David Kalstone, Merrill commented: "I think science is a visionary landscape in the twentieth century and was even in the nineteenth ... we certainly are starved for the scientific myths. These are constantly bursting out in front of us in fascinating forms, and I suppose the point would be to show or to somehow open the possibility that the classical myths and the scientific myths are really one and the same." Mirabell: Books of Number was recognized with the National Book Award in Poetry in 1979. MIMI BAZILIKOI [cover title] [Athens, Greece: Galery Zoimpoilake, 1979] Stiff white wrappers printed in black with a color reproduction of one of the paintings on the front cover. This exhibit catalog of James Merrill's good friend Mimi Vassilikos' paintings includes an untitled poem. The first line begins: "My dear, you wrote describing that white dress." The catalog is in Greek and James Merrill's poem is in English. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, cloth issue. Green cloth over boards; title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in silver on spine; green endpapers, top edge orange. White dust jacket printed in silver, black and red with an illustration in blue, green and brown. SCRIPTS FOR THE PAGEANT New York: Atheneum, 1980. First edition, paper issue, published simultaneously. Gift of the publisher, with publicity release and review slip laid in, noting publication date of April 30, 1980. Stiff white wrappers printed in silver, black and red, with the same illustrations as the cloth dust jacket. Kenyon Review. New series. Volume I, number 3 (Summer, 1979). Includes "Scripts for the Pageant/The First Five Lessons," pp. 158-178. Gift of Mrs. Louis Henry Cohn. In the Kenyon Review appearance, James Merrill provides a preview of Scripts for the Pageant, the concluding volume of the monumental long poem, printed with an informative introduction, in which he discusses particular aspects of Mirabell, contrasting that book with what is to be found in Scripts. Charles Berger has described the epic as "what may well be the most astonishing poem ever written by an American.... For Mirabell and Scripts raise so many profound questions about sacred poetry and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, that evading their doctrines would also entail ignoring the wisdom literature of Merrill's greatest predecessors--poets such as Dante, Homer, Milton, Blake." IDEAS, ETC. [New York: Jordan Davies, 1980] Limited to 200 signed and numbered copies. This is copy 42. Four cream sheets folded and sewn into unprinted grey wrappers; rose dust wrappers with title and author printed in red within decorative border on the front cover. The poems in this slim collection are "Lenses", "Ideas", and "Think Tank", which first appeared in the periodicals Ploughshares, The Nation, and Georgia Review. SAMOS Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 50. There were also 26 lettered and 4 ad personum copies all signed and issued in a black buckram-covered slipcase. Ten white leaves and four blank leaves gathered and cased into grayish-olive green cloth over boards; author and title printed in black and gold on front cover, black leather label with title and author printed in gold on spine; acetate dust wrapper. Designed by Grant Dahlstrom and printed at the Castle Press. "Samos" first appeared in The New Yorker magazine. The poem, in six stanzas, begins the first section of "&" in Scripts for the Pageant and is published in this edition with only one minor variant. [HARVARD/RADCLIFFE PHI BETA KAPPA LITERARY EXERCISES] Program, June 3, 1980. Single sheet folded, printed in black. James Merrill was invited to give the Phi Beta Kappa poem for 1980. He chose "The Ballroom at Sandover". The poem subsequently had its first printed appearance in Harvard Magazine (September-October, 1980). POETS & WRITERS, INC. TENTH BIRTHDAY PARTY [New York: Poets & Writers, 1980] Stiff white wrappers with a multi-color reproduction of Paul Davis' depiction of Roseland on the front cover. This chapbook of poems, stories, cartoons and patron advertising was published as part of the celebration of Poets & Writers Tenth Birthday, a benefit affair. James Merrill has contributed the four-line poem, "Laser Majesty", marking its first publication. NINETEEN POEMS By Robert Morse No place: [Temple Press, 1981] Foreword by James Merrill Stiff pale blue wrappers with author and title printed in green on front cover. In his preliminary remarks, James Merrill pays tribute to his old friend's many accomplishments. Robert Morse is a well-remembered figure in both Mirabell and Scripts for the Pageant. "POOR SHATTERED HIP (WAS SHE IN FACT)" [first line] [Atlanta, Georgia: Privately Printed], 1982. Broadside, 4 1/2" x 6" White card stock. James Merrill's handwritten poem and Mrs. Plummer's message reproduced in black on verso; name and address and illustrations reproduced in blue on recto. An unknown number of copies of James Merrill's six-line poem were produced as a postcard thank-you note for use by his mother. The text is reproduced in Occasions & Inscriptions (1984). SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, paper issue. Limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the author. This is copy 62. Metacom Limited Editions Series No. 8. Six cream sheets folded and sewn into mottled grey wrappers with a maroon dust wrapper also sewn on; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover. Designed, printed and bound by Nancy King and William Ferguson. SANTORINI: STOPPING THE LEAK Worcester: Metacom Press, 1982. First edition, cloth issue. Limited to 26 lettered copies signed by the author, not for sale. Copy V. Natural linen cloth over boards; white paper label with author and title printed in black and maroon on front cover; maroon endpapers; acetate dust wrapper. This edition of the poem is the first publication of the full text. "Santorini: Stopping the Leak" first appeared in The New Yorker, minus the twelfth and twenty-ninth stanzas. YALE UNIVERSITY TWO HUNDREDTH AND EIGHTY-FIRST COMMENCEMENT New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1982. Program, photograph and miscellaneous related pieces. Gift of Mrs. Hellen I. Plummer. James Merrill was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale University on May 24, 1982. The Citation, written by Professor Harold Bloom, the well-known critic, reads: You have been recognized as the supreme artist among your own generation of American poets. Your lyrics are subtle, profound, and turned so finely as to touch the limits of art. Recently, you have given us your Commedia as the extraordinary trilogy of long poems, which have been compared to those of the century's greats and are worthy of that company. For your enduring contribution to American poetry, Yale confers upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters. AMHERST COLLEGE 35TH REUNION JUNE 3-6, 1982 [Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College, 1982] Stiff white wrappers printed in purple and black. Includes autobiographical sketch by James Merrill in response to a college reunion questionnaire. Merrill's one-page handwritten statement is reproduced in facsimile. MARBLED PAPER Salem, Oregon: Charles Seluzicki Fine Books, 1982. Limited to 200 copies signed by the author. Five white sheets printed in black, red and grey and two grey sheets folded and sewn into heavy grey wrappers with one of the masks printed in grey on the front cover. Printed by Christine Bertelson at the Rara Avis Press in Riverside, California. This interesting collection includes the poems "Hubbell Pierce (1925-80)", about an old school friend, "Palm Beach with Portuguese Man-of-War", "The Help", "Tsikoudhia", "Opaque Morning W.C.W.", "Acrostic", "Last Mornings in California", and "Lorelei". Some of the poems had earlier appearances in magazines, an exhibit catalogue of the works of Tom Ingle, The Fire Screen and The Yellow Pages. The illustrations in this very handsome production were taken from photographs of funeral masks unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. PETER [Old Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Deerfield Press/[Dublin, Ireland]: The Gallery Press, [1982] Illustrated and hand-coloured by Timothy Engelland. Limited to 300 copies signed by the author. Black cloth with title, author and publishers printed in gold on spine; avocado endpapers; avocado dust jacket printed in black. Accompanied by autograph and typescript worksheets for "Peter's Tattoos", 12 pp. Part 1 of "Peter" was first published in The New Yorker under the title "Peter's Tattoos". THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in paper wrappers. Black cloth over boards, author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; title, author and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; purple pictorial endpapers reproducing photographs and a silhouette of some of the principal figures in the poem; top edge deep pink; white dust jacket printed in dark brown, black and lavender. Errata slip correcting the third and fourth stanzas of Book 7.6 of Mirabell is laid in. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff wrappers printed in dark brown, black and lavender, with the same pictorial material as on endpapers above on recto only. Errata slip, as above, laid in. Accompanied by a late typescript of Mirabell: Books of Number, 77 pp. The Changing Light at Sandover collects in one volume the whole of "The Book of Ephraim", Mirabell: Books of Number, Scripts for the Pageant and adds a new Coda: The Higher Keys. Washington University Library holds the worksheets of all sections of the long poem. Shown here is a late draft of Books O-6 of Mirabell: Books of Number assembled with the cut and paste technique, probably the only practical way to handle such a long and complex poem. Interestingly, the typewriter used could produce both roman and italic faces but all the ampersands have been added in pencil in James Merrill's hand. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, cloth issue. Issued simultaneously in wrappers. Off-white linen cloth over boards; author's initials and title printed in blind on front cover; author, title and publisher printed in iridescent bronze on spine; off-white endpapers; top edge blue. White dust jacket printed in blue and black, featuring a photograph of James Merrill by Thomas Victor on the front cover. Although the title page states 1982, the book was in fact published in January 1983. FROM THE FIRST NINE: POEMS 1946-1976 New York: Atheneum, 1982 [i.e. 1983] First edition, paper issue. Stiff white wrappers printed in blue and black, featuring the same photograph. Accompanied by worksheets of the poem "The Cosmological Eye", retitled "The Blue Eye", 5 pp. From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1976 collects in one volume all the poems James Merrill wished to preserve from his first nine trade books, that is, from The Black Swan through Divine Comedies. A postscript poem, "Clearing the Title", first published in 1980, has been added. The poet has elected, however, to revise some of the poems once again, as he explains in the "Note" at the conclusion of the volume. As an example, he reprints the first version of "The Cosmological Eye" from The Black Swan, radically changed and retitled "The Blue Eye". The worksheets for this rewriting, shown here, are dated March 1979. NORTHERN LIGHTS [spine title] [Winston-Salem: Palaemon Press Limited, 1983] Limited to 95 copies, signed by the poets, of which 55 numbered copies are for sale and 20 lettered copies are for the use of the poets and publisher. This is copy 24. Portfolio of 15 broadsides. 14" x 19" with a colophon leaf 10" x 7", issued collectively under the title Northern Lights. No title page. White leaves printed in black and red. Laid into a folding case of natural linen with marbled paper sides in light brown, dark grey, rust and yellow; brown ties. Black leather label printed in gold on spine. This portfolio includes the only appearance to date of James Merrill's poem "Sentimental Colloquy." The other poets in Northern Lights are Philip Booth, John Ciardi, Donald Davie, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Howard Moss, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass, Radcliffe Squires, William Stafford and John Updike. THINK TANK [Amherst: The Friends of the Amherst College Library], 1983. Limited to 450 copies. Single white leaf, french-folded to make four pages, printed in red and black, issued in a mailing envelope printed in red. Gift of Amherst College. "Think Tank" first appeared in the Georgia Review in 1976, was collected in Ideas, etc. (1980), and was first separately published in 1983 when James Merrill served as the sixth Robert Frost Library Fellow at Amherst College; the piece was presented to guests at a dinner on April 29, 1983. An account of the dinner and a reprinting of the piece may be found in Vol. XI of the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library 1983. THE WATERFALL [New York: Glenn Horowitz, 1983] Illustrated by Robert Perkins. Limited to 40 numbered copies and a few artist's proofs signed by artist and author. This is Copy 30. 15 lettered copies were also produced for inclusion in a future portfolio. Broadside, 29 1/2" x 18 3/4". Single cream leaf lithographed in black and red. The text of this striking lithograph is comprised of the third and fourth stanzas of section three of "McKane's Falls", which first appeared in Poetry magazine and was collected in Part I of Divine Comedies. In a letter of November 5, 1984 to this compiler, James Merrill explains: "In the present case I went down to the studio and wrote out the lines on the lithograph stone; on a 2nd stone [Perkins] then contrived the waterfall which partially obliterates them." FROM THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR Omaha, Nebraska: Abattoir Editions, 1983. Limited to 290 copies. This is copy 83. White Goyu papers, folded and sewn Japanese-style into rust wrappers with a white label printed in black within a decorative rust border on the front cover. Printed by Harry Duncan and bound by Alison Wilson. This is a beautiful piece of printing. The intricacies of James Merrill's text, which would have been traumatic for a lesser hand typesetter, are impeccably handled by the master craftsman, Harry Duncan. The cover label to this sequence of poems sets the stage: "James Merrill with shades of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Mirabell, Maria Mitsotaki, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens and the angel Michael." THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRD By Richard Kenney New Haven and London: Yale University Press, [1984] First edition, cloth issue. Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 79. Blue cloth over boards; author, title and publisher printed in gold on spine. White dust jacket printed in blue and black. Publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is open to any American writer under forty years of age who has not previously published a volume of poetry. James Merrill served as judge for the 1983 competition and contributed a fine introduction to the collection. BRONZE [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 150 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 50. Sewn white sheets laced into blue paper over boards; title printed in blue on front cover. "Bronze" first appeared in the magazine Grand Street. This handsome production of the poem celebrates the sixth year of the Nadja imprint, Carol Sturm and Douglas Wolf, proprietors. SOUVENIRS [New York]: Nadja, [1984] Limited to 200 numbered copies and 26 lettered copies, all signed by the author. This is copy 58. Five off-white sheets folded and sewn into a twice-folded green wrapper, with title printed in red on front cover. The poems in this collection are "An Upset", "The Metro", "The House Fly", "The Suppliant", "The Illustrations", "The Pier: Under Pisces", "Dead Center", and "The Blue Grotto". OCCASIONS & INSCRIPTIONS [New York: Jordan Davies, 1984] Limited to 58 copies. Five white sheets folded and sewn into maroon wrappers, folded at the foredge. Errata sheet for [p. 14] laid in. These brief occasional poems, five of which appeared in the 1974 broadside Five Inscriptions, were collected and arranged by J.D. McClatchy and Alfred Corn for presentation to James Merrill on his 58th birthday. The earliest poem is dated 1952 and the latest 1983. In addition to the error corrected on the laid-in slip, other typographical errors occur.
© 1993-99 Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
