SOURCE: James Merrill: An Introduction to the Poetry, Columbia University Press, 1984, 247 p.

In the following excerpt, Moffett calls The Changing Light at Sandover“Merrill's greatest achievement” and probes the sources of composition and themes of the work.

Then Sky alone is left, a hundred blue Fragments in revolution, with no clue To where a Niche will open. Quite a task, Putting together Heaven, yet we do. 

—“Lost in Translation”

I have received from whom I do not know These letters. Show me, light, if they make sense. 

—“From the Cupola”

I

The Changing Light at Sandover is Merrill's grandest achievement. Into its more than five hundred pages has gone everything he knows about writing poetry, everything he believes about living among other people in the world, all his deepest-held values, fears, convictions, and prejudices, spread among passages of “revelation” spelled out on a Ouija board. Not everyone will...