“Poets don’t write first of all in English or American so much as each in an idiom peculiar to himself.”
That was the first principle of poet James Merrill. The mid-century Golden Boy of American poetry. While the wild-eyed, wild- haired beat poets and bards of pop song took Walt Whitman’s style to the edge of meaning to howl about the condition of American society, Merrill looked into his own world and with great lyrical precision forged that “idiom peculiar to himself.” Merrill was born into the Aristocracy of Money. His father co-founded Merrill Lynch. It was a world of beauty and refinement, with Merrill himself the most beautiful and refined thing in it.
It was also a gay world in which the closet door was just on the verge of being opened. What his eye fell on he wrote about, from emerald rings to Ouija boards. Golden boy, silver voice.
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)
Guests:
J. D. McClatchy, editor, “Collected Poems: James Merrill”, and editor, “Yale Review”;
Rachel Jacoff, editor, “The Poets’ Dante,” essays by Merrill and other poets on Dante.