I couldn’t have written this book without the close collaboration of James Merrill’s literary executors, J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser. Sandy’s belief in the importance of the story and his confidence in this first-time biographer were sustaining at every step, over fourteen years. Stephen’s intellect and kindness set high bars. And this is to say nothing of the practical assistance they tirelessly supplied, or, more important yet, the room they gave me to reach my own conclusions.
It’s a sign of the esteem he inspired that so many of Merrill’s friends and family were ready to contribute to this book. Peter Hooten invited me into his home, introduced me to Cosmo, and, over many years, generously shared memories and reflections as well as photos and documents, including Merrill’s letters to him. Robin Magowan offered insights into his uncle’s life and work and his family history in dozens of letters and conversations; with Robin, I toured Southampton and studied family photos in the archives at Yale and Amherst. Charles Merrill spoke to me candidly about his brother, his father, and his childhood, and put more of his memories into letters to me. Claude Fredericks hosted me in Pawlet with his special warmth and graciousness; with his partner Marc Harrington, he copied and annotated hundreds of pages from his diary and his forty-five-year correspondence with Merrill. In letters and conversation, Frederick Buechner told me about his friendships with Merrill and Hellen Plummer, took me on a tour of the Lawrenceville campus, and introduced me to members of the Class of 1943 at their sixtieth reunion. From Sewelly Jackson, who gave me a grocery bag full of letters and photos, I learned about David Jackson’s early life, his family, and her long friendship with Jimmy and David. David McIntosh was a revelatory guide to New Mexico—and to sides of Merrill that few people ever saw. Donald Richie was a charming, clear-eyed, always quotable authority on Jimmy’s Japan and much more. Alfred Corn, who first introduced me to Merrill’s poetry, offered shrewd perspectives on the poet and his friends. Judith Moffett was an encouraging reader who shared rich memories and reflections with me. John Hollander was devoted to James Merrill and his poetry; I wish he had lived long enough to read this book. George Lazaretos, Nelly Liambey, Strato and Vaso Mouflouzélis, and Vassili Vassilikos returned with me to Athens in the 1960s and 1970s; and I couldn’t have had my marvelous conversations with them without Maria Walker, my Greek translator.
For additional interviews and correspondence, I’m grateful to: Alan Ansen, John Ashbery and David Kermani, Norman Austin, Christine Ayoub and Josiane Boulad-Ayoub, John Balderson and Rolando Rodriguez, John Berendt, Frank Bidart, Torren Blair, Marie-Claire Blais, Mary Bomba, Robert Brustein, William Burford, Virgil Burnett, John Camp, Natalie Charkow, Ross Claiborne, Henri Cole, Joseph Crowley, Daria D’Arienzo, Joan Darling, Benjamin DeMott, Dr. Thomas Detre, Dimitri Diamantipolous, Rosemary Donnelly, Alistair Elliott, C. Peter Forcey, Steven and Kae Geller, Walker and Nancy Gibson, Peter Gillis, Robert Giroux, Dr. Benjamin (Bud) Gordon, Robert Grimes, Maxine Groffsky, Thom Gunn, Allan Gurganus, Rachel Hadas, Dr. Jack Hagstrum, Luly Hamlin, Stratis Haviaras, Huyler Held, Daryl Hine, Richard Howard, Jack Howkins, Inez Ingle, David Jackson, Linda James, Matthew Jennett, Ferne Kalstone, V. A. Kolve and Larry Luchtel, Nina and Dimitri Koutsadakis, Marilyn and Irving Lavin, Paul Leahy, Liz Lear, John Leatham, Samuel Lock, Albert Palmer Loenig, Alison Lurie, Mark Magowan, Merrill Magowan, Peter Magowan, Kathe Marshall, Hunter Martin, Harry Mathews, Dr. Braxton McKee, Amy Merrill, Bruce Merrill, Catherine Merrill, Paul Merrill, W. S. Merwin, Richard Meryman, Alice Methfessel, Diane Middlebrook, Regan Morse, Orson Munn, Stephen Orgel, Harry Pemberton, Eleanor Perényi, Robert Pounder, Pierre Riches, Steven Rydman, Laurence Scott, Charles Shoup, Andrew Silverman, Rosemary Sprague, Rowlie Stebbins, Jerl Surratt, Mona Van Duyn and Jarvis Thurston, Haris Vavlianos, Helen Vendler, Theodore Weiss, Edmund White, Richard and Charlee Wilbur, Chauncey Williams, Robert W. Wilson, Kenneth Work, and John Zervos.
For reading the whole book and responding with small and large suggestions, I’m indebted to James Longenbach, Robin Magowan, Juliet Mattila, J. D. McClatchy, Jeff Nunokawa, Robert Polito, Karin Roffman, Helen Vendler, and Stephen Yenser. Many debts are recognized in the Notes. In addition, I’m grateful to the following people who helped me think through the project’s challenges, shared their knowledge of one or more of the topics it touches on, and otherwise aided and abetted my work: Mark Bauer, Susan Bianconi, Kenneth Bleeth, Leslie Brisman, David Bromwich, Lynn and Jeff Callahan, Jill Campbell, Claire Class, Peter Cole, my agent Robert Cornfield, Bonnie Costello, Christina Davis, Richard Deming, Inger Elliott, William Flesch, Marina Frangos, Paul Fry, Jonathan Galassi, Janet Gezari, Roger Gilbert, Louise Glück, Joseph Gordon, Kenneth Gross, John Guil- lory, Piotr Gwiazda, Hala Halim, Jeffrey Harrison, Charles Hartman, Koen Hilberdink, Adina Hoffman, Cecelia Holland, Susan Howe, Amy Hungerford, Benjamin Ivry, Kamran Javadizadeh, Nicholas Jenkins, Edward Kamens, Nathan Kernan, Karl Kirchwey, Penelope Laurans, David Lehman, Anastasia Logotheti, Joseph Lowenstein, Sibby Lynch, Sophia Macris, Lawrence Manley, Timothy Materer, Richard Maxwell, Susan McCabe, Edward Mendelson, Steven Meyer, Chuck O’Boyle, Siobhan Phillips, Vivian Pollak, William Pritchard, Spencer Reese, Marc Robinson, Sam See, Emily Setina, Daniel Shea, Donald Sheehan, Michael Snedicker, David Sofield, Willard Spiegelman, Justin Spring, George Syrimis, Lucia Vincioni, Michael Warner, Aidan Wasley, Ruth Yeazell, and Cynthia Zarin. I’ve learned from and been energized by the students who’ve studied Merrill with me at Yale. Let a talented and merry seminar from 2012—Erica Kao, Eli Mandel, and Max Ritvo, in particular—stand for more.
Yearlong fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York gave me time away from teaching during which much of this biography was written. At the Levy Center, I appreciated the camaraderie-in-biography provided by the center’s director Gary Giddins, his colleagues Michael Gately and John Matthews, and my fellow fellows. My work also benefited from stimulating periods as a resident fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa and at the James Merrill House in Stonington—where Lynn Callahan, Sally Wood, and the rest of the Merrill House Committee have done so much to further Merrill’s legacy in a spirit he would approve. For essential research support, I’m grateful to the Hellen Plummer Foundation, and to LGBT Studies at Yale, the Magowan Family Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and Hellenic Studies at Yale, the Rosenkranz Foundation, and Yale’s Office of the Provost. I’ve been fortunate to work with superb research assistants. How could I have gotten this biography going without Rachel Slaughter in St. Louis, or wound it up years later without Justin Sider in New Haven?
This book is built out of the Merrill Papers in Olin Library of Washington University in St. Louis, where my work was supported by a skilled and generous research staff, including the late John Hodge, Joel Minor, and Sarah Schnuriger, and by the library’s director, Jeffrey Trzeciak. Over the past decade, the James Merrill Papers in the Yale Collection of American Literature at Beinecke Library has grown into a major collection under the stewardship of Nancy Kuhl and Timothy Young, who have been good friends to me and to this project. For their help in the early stages of my work, I am grateful to Daria D’Arienzo, former curator of Special Collections, Robert Frost Library, Amherst College, and Matthew Jennett, former curator of Special Collections, Rare Books and Archives, the American College of Greece. I’ve made use of letters and other materials in the following locations: Berg Collection, New York Public Library; University of Delaware Library; Danowski Poetry Library, Emory University; Firestone Library, Princeton University; Getty Research Center, Los Angeles; Houghton Library, Harvard University; Alfred A. Knopf, files; Lilly Library, Indiana University; Mandeville Special Collections, University of California San Diego; Morgan Library, New York City; Poetry Center Archives, 92nd St. YMHA; Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; Schlesinger Library, Harvard-Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College; University of Waterloo Library; Wheaton College Archives; and Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard University. I also quote from letters by James Merrill that were contributed by the following individuals or their estates, most of which were collected by J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser: André Aciman; Don Adams; Agha Shahid Ali; Norman Austin; Stanislaw Baranczak; Torren Blair; Billie Boatwright; Roger Bourland; George Bradley; Henri Cole; Douglas Crase; John Fandel; Louis Fitzhugh; C. Peter Forcey; Carolyn Grassi; Allan Gurganus; Rachel Hadas; Barbara Hersey; Peter Hooten; Richard Howard; Barbara Howes; Barbara Kassel; Rudy Kikel; Marilyn Lavin; Paul Lawson; Terry Layman; Robin Magowan; Peter Moore; Clara Claiborne Park; Eleanor Perényi; Craig Poile; Robert Pounder; Elise Sanguinetti; Andrew Silverman; Henry Sloss; David Tacium; Dorothea Tanning; Peter Taylor; Helen Vendler; Brian Walker; and Craig Wright.
Quotations from James Merrill’s unpublished writing are copyright © the Literary Estate of James Merrill at Washington University in St. Louis and appear by permission of Olin Library, Washington University in St. Louis, and J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser.
Parts of this book appeared in preliminary form in Literary Imagination, Parnassus, Poetica (Tokyo), Raritan, and The Wallace Stevens Journal. Masks of the Poet: James Merrill and Kimon Friar, an essay and exhibition catalog, was published by the American College of Greece, Athens, in 2003. I’m grateful to the editors who sponsored these trial publications.
Deborah Garrison, my editor at Knopf, read every page of this manuscript with an ear for nuance and phrasing, an eye for tone, pace, and themes, and just the right amount of red pen. I can’t imagine an editor with better judgment or more patience. I am very grateful to her and to the whole team at Knopf, including her assistant Ann Eggers, my crackerjack production editor Kevin Bourke, the gifted page designer Maggie Hinders, and Chip Kidd, who cheered me along the way, then created a brilliant jacket design, capturing the spirit of this biography.
Last, let me mention my family. Forrester Hammer, my son, accompanied me on far-flung research trips, practiced a Schubert Impromptu on James Merrill’s Steinway, and talked over much of this book as I wrote it. My son Julian Hammer may one day open it and see what his father was busy with when he was new in the world and discovering his first books.
It’s hard to put into words the essential contribution of my wife, Uta Gosmann. Time and again, she deepened my understanding of James Merrill’s life, while making sure that I not only thought hard about my own, but lived it fully. Books, like lives, are made day by day. How fortunate I am to share mine with her.