James Merrill Poems

James Merrill once called his poetic works 'chronicles of love and loss' and in twenty books written over four decades he used the details of his life - comic and haunting exotic and domestic - to shape a compelling sometimes intensely moving personal portrait. Sophisticated witty and ironic his poetry also engages passionately with topical issues - war terrorism political corruption AIDS climate change and the destruction of nature. An admirer of Wallace Stevens Elizabeth Bishop and W. H. Auden Merrill like them has left a legacy that will speak to readers for years to come.