On Merrill

On Merrill offers an eclectic array of responses to the work of James Merrill, on the occasion of his centennial. Including contributions both by fellow poets and by critics, its concerns range from the relationships in his work between self and style, between prosodic tradition and innovation, and between travelogue and mourning, to considerations of the artistry of his prose, of his connection to Wordsworth, of his generative experience of modern and ancient Greek, and of his engagement with our ecocatastrophic present.  What emerges is a picture of a body of work whose center is everywhere, structured around an “extravagant centrality.”

Contributors: Hilton Als, Jennifer Clavoe, Peter Dimock, Carl Phillips, Jonathan F. S. Post, Willard Spiegelman, A. E. Stallings, Stephen Yenser, Lee Zimmerman