James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 – February 6, 1995) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American writer, increasingly repute one of a first 20th century poets in the English language.

Life

James Ingram Merrill was innate around New York City to Hellen Ingram Merrill and Charles E. Merrill, founding partner of the Merrill Lynch investment firm. He experienced deuce older half sib (the brother & the sister) from either his father's foremost marriage. As the son, Merrill enjoyed a extremely privileged upbringing inside economic & training terms. Merrill's childhood governess taught him French and German, an experience Merrill wrote just about within his 1974 verse form "Lost in Translation."

His parents separated whenever he was eleven, so divorced whenever he was thirteen years old. As a stripling, Merrill attended a Lawrenceville School, where he befriended first novelist Frederick Buechner. After Merrill was 16 years old, his father collected his short stories & verse form & published a children as a surprise under the title ''Jim's Book. At first supprised, Merrill would late regard a precocious book as an embarrassment.

Merrill was drafted within 1944 into the United States Army and served for eight months. His studies interrupted by war & armed forces service, Merrill returned to Amherst College within 1945 and graduated in 1947. The Black Swan'', a collection of verse form Merrill's Amherst prof (& lover) Kimon Friar published privately in Athens, Greece in 1946, was printed in upright of these hundred copies after Merrill was 20 years old. Merrill's foremost matured operate, A Black Swan is Merrill's scarcely title & considered one of a 20th century's virtually all collectable literary rarities. Merrill's 1st commercially-published volume was Number one Poems, issued inside 990 numbered copies by Alfred A. Knopf in 1951.

Merrill's partner of supplementary than quaternary decades was David Jackson, also the writer. Merrill & Jackson met inside Up to date York City fallowing the performance of Merrill's "The Bait" in 1953. Together, it moved to Stonington, Connecticut in 1955. For deuce decades, a few spent a share of both month inside Athens, Greece. Greek themes, venue, & characters play the large role inside Merrill's writing. Within 1979 Merrill and Jackson began spending a portion of both month at Jackson's range in Key West, Florida.

Merrill painted the candid portrait of his life by having Jackson & by owning his late partner, actor Peter Hooten, in his 1993 memoir A Different Person. Merrill revealed that he suffered writer's block early in his career and sought psychiatric help to overcome its effects.

Despite his dandy portable wealth, Merrill lived with modesty. When his father's dying within 1956, Merrill utilized tremendously of his inheritance to produce a Ingram Merrill Foundation, supporting literature, the arts, & public television.

Merrill served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1979 until his death. He died in February 6 1995 while vacationing in Arizona from a heart attack related to AIDS.

Awards

Merrill was awarded each major poetry award in a United States, including the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies. Merrill won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983 for his epic poem The Changing Light at Sandover (composed partly of purportedly supernatural messages received vithe the utilize of a Ouija board). Around 1990, he received a number 1 Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry awarded by the Library of Congress for The Inner Room. He received a National Book Award for Nights and Days within 1967 and over again in 1979 for Mirabell: Books of Number. He won a Bollingen Prize for Poetry within 1973.

Style
James Merrill's significance as a writer lies inside his studied apply of his personal relation to fuel his poetry. He was considered the pre-leading master of poetic meter and form, although he also produced free and blank verse.

Works by Merrill

Since his dying, Merrill's act has been anthologized inside terzetto divisions: Collected Poems, Collected Prose, & Collected Novels & Plays. Accordingly, his operate in the image below is divided upon people equivalent lines.

Poetry
A Black Swan (1946) Number one Verse form (1951) The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace (1959) Water Street (1962) Nights and Days (1966) The Fire Screen (1969) Braving the Elements (1972) Divine Comedies (1976), including "Lost in Translation" and The Book of Ephraim Mirabell: Books of Number (1978) Scripts for the Pageant (1980) The Changing Light at Sandover (1982) From either a Number one Nine: Verse form 1946-1976 (1982) Late Settings (1985) The Inner Room (1988) Selected Verse form 1946-1985 (1992) A Scattering of Salts (1995) Gathered Verse form (2001) ISBN 0375411399

Prose
Recitative (1986) - essays A Different Person (1993) - memoir Gathered Prose (2004) ISBN 0375411364

Novels and Plays
Novels
The Seraglio (1957) The (Diblos) Notebook (1965) Drama
A Birthday (1947) A Immortal Married man (1955) The Bait (1960) Collection
Gathered Novels & Plays (2002) ISBN 0375411372

Works about Merrill
Stephen Yenser, A Overwhelming Myth: The Act of James Merrill (1987) Alison Lurie, Familiar Spirits: A Memoir of James Merrill & David Jackson (2000) James Merrill: Essays inside Criticism (1983) Reflected Houses (1986) audio recording A Voice of the Poet: James Merrill (1999) Audio Book