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Last Poems

By James Merrill
Introduced by J.D. McClatchy

1998
Tan morocco and green paste paper

Although we wish these were his latest poems rather than his last, Thornwillow Press is honored to offer the final works of James Merrill, one of the few acknowledged masters of 20th-century American poetry.

Without question, Merrill, who once declined to become poet laureate, was always the laureate of poets. His sudden death in February, 1995 at the age of sixty-eight left a tragic void among those who knew and loved him. It was a loss also felt among a large and faithful band of readers who over the years followed his life’s work and relished its images, its surprises, its wit and wisdom, its sadness, and its wry and supple revelations as their own. He used poetry to illuminate his life and, by so doing, offered his readers a chance to recognize and understand their own lives. Those who read him invariably experience an extraordinarily singular and personal response - as if the poems had been addressed especially to them.

As J. D. McClatchy, one of Merrill’s close friends and himself the editor of the Yale Review, a distinguished poet and critic, remarked in his lengthy New Yorker memoir: "James Merrill gave his lifetime to language, and to the ways its hard truths and mysterious graces come to constitute our lives."

In his New York Times obituary Mel Gussow declared Merrill’s collective achievement to have established him "as heir to the lyrical legacy of W. H. Auden and Wallace Stevens..." Mr. McClatchy’s introduction to the last poems offers knowing insights into Merrill’s poetry and to the circumstances surrounding the creation of these, his final works. McClatchy reminds us that each of these seven poems "begin[s] with a sensation - a color, say, or a glimpse of weather...a sense of possibility" that moves the reader through a "collage of circumstances" and "towards some larger idea of itself." Concise yet absolutely at home with his subject, mcClatchy offers us a remarkable introduction to these glowing works.

In 1967, when he was 40, Merrill won the first of his two National Book Awards in poetry for Nights and Days. His judges were Auden, James Dickey, and Howard Nemerov and their citation recognized "his scrupulous and uncompromising cultivation of the poetic art, evidenced in his refusal to settle for an easy and profitable stance; his insistence on taking the kind of tough, poetic chances which make the difference between esthetic success or failure." Six years later he was awarded theBbollingen Prize, one of the most coveted honors for an American poet. And in 1976 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his Divine Comedies. But, as McClatchy observes, Merrill never became complacent. He continued to seek out "more rigorous lessons." In his Paris Review interview, Merrill once mused, "Don’t you think there comes a time when everyone, not just a poet, wants to get beyond the self?" Continually his work progressed - into further revelation, greater linguistic agility, and more profound excursions.

Last Poems is further confirmation of Merrill’s genius, and the first collection of them under a single cover. Two poems, Minotaur and Oranges, appear here in their first publication anywhere and Christmas Tree appears for the first time in its intended configuration - "as if the reader were in an adjacent room whose doorway blocked his view of the decorated tree."

Last Poems was printed letterpress directly from the type on paper handmade especially for the edition at the Cardinal Mill in Moravia, Czech Republic. The frontispiece contains a hand-printed photogravure portrait of Mr. Merrill by Mariana Cook. The copies are bound in moroccan goatskin and handmade paste paper, and are presented in a velvet-lined traycase. The edition is limited to 185 copies and is signed by Mariana Cook and J. D. McClatchy.