Literary Birthday – 3 March – James Merrill

James Merrill was born 3 March 1926 and died 6 February 1995.

James Merrill Quotes

1. I’d like to think the scientists need us – but do they? Did Newton need Blake?
2. Freedom to be oneself is all very well; the greater freedom is not to be oneself.
3. Let the mind be, along with countless other things, a landing strip for sacred visitations.
4. Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays. But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn’t always have to speak in my own voice.

James Merrill was an American poet. He was the winner of two National Book Awards, the Bollingen Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the first Bobbit Prize from the Library of Congress. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1977 for Divine Comedies. Although most of his published work was poetry, he also wrote essays, fiction, and plays. Merrill served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1979 until his death. He published 11 volumes of poems, in addition to the trilogy that makes up The Changing Light at Sandover, as well as two plays, two novels, a collection of essays and interviews, and a memoir, A Different Person. Merrill was ‘praised for his stylish elegance, moral sensibilities, and transformation of autobiographical moments into deep and complex meditations.’

Source for image: Judith Moffett, www.judithmoffett.com, CC BY 3.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Merrill_(1973)_(cropped).jpg
Listen to the author here

by Amanda Patterson

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