Versification was encouraged in the Merrill household, so much so that in Merrill's senior year at Lawrenceville School, his father privately published his first book of poems. Merrill attended Amherst College, where he continued to write poetry, though his studies were interrupted by a year in the infantry during World War II. Returning to Amherst, he published poetry in
Poetry and
Kenyon Review and completed his thesis on Marcel Proust. Proust, in his fascination with the everyday and with one's own history, would have a lasting influence on Merrill's later poetry. Wealth also meant that Merrill did not have to earn his living from poetry and could live where he wanted as he wanted. Throughout his life, he travelled in Europe extensively, and made homes in Stonington, Connecticut; Athens, Greece; and New York City. With the death of his father, Merrill established the Ingram Merrill Foundation to provide grants to writers and painters. Merrill died of a heart attack in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995.
Merrill's literary product shows a gradual ripening and maturity of form from the first of his published works up through the last. The poems in First Poems (1951) received mixed reviews, and for the next several years, Merrill wrote short stories, a novel, and tried his hand at theater.
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