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.

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