With the completion of The Changing Light at Sandover (1982), which presents the revised "sacred books" of his philosophical verse trilogy with the addition of a coda, James Merrill earned his place as one of the most original and major poets of the twentieth century. This epic poem--a vast cosmology that tackles such topics as subatomic particle physics, the history of God's plan for the universe, reincarnation and population control, and the role of art--also takes place at the "salon level" as a series of communiques from disembodied spirits who reach the poet via a Ouija board. That a major poem has such an outrageously peculiar basis is one of the great stories of American poetry; the story proves even more interesting when seen in the light of the progress of a basically fastidious poet whose wit and playfulness have come to include openness, seriousness,and revelation.
Born in New York City to Charles Edward and Hellen Ingram Merrill, James Ingram Merrill attended the Lawrenceville School and graduated with a B.A.
