The Changing Light at Sandover

James Merrills audacious and dazzling epic poem,The Changing Light at Sandover,remains as startling today as when it first emerged in separate volumes over a period of several years. Individual parts won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the entire poem, when it was collected into one volume in 1982, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is now an American classic, here in a definitive new hardcover edition that includesVoices from Sandover,Merrills recasting of the poem for the stage. The book carries us to the scene of Merrills Ouija board sessions with his partner, David Jacksonthe candlelit Stonington dining room with its flame-colored walls and the famous Willowware cup they used as a pointer in their occult travels. In a shimmering interplay of verse forms, Merrill set down their extended conversations with their familiar and guide, Ephraim (a first-century Greek Jew), W. H. Auden,...