Selected poems - James Merrill

For the first time in years the poems of James Merrill, a major American

writer, are available in Britain. In the months before his death he

assembled this essential volume with European readers in mind. It includes

material from all his books, with extracts from the extended narrative

poems. Harold Bloom declared, 'Surely he will be remembered as the Mozart

of American poetry, classical rather than mannerist or baroque, master of

the changing light or perfection that consoles.'

The effortless control Merrill, with his resourceful diction,

brings to traditional and invented forms, sets him in a class with Auden as

technician. Readers who find single poems 'baroque' and over-wrought

discover on closer acquaintance the taut control, the balance and

containment, in a poetry whose occasions are volatile, whose energies

require invention, extension and the tact of honest art.