Merrill’s money – his father cofounded Merrill, Lynch & Co. – let him write full time, and he used the time well, eventually winning Pulitzer and Bollingen prizes and two National Book Awards. His lyric poems from 1946 to 1976 combine an intimidating mastery of rhyme and meter with imagistic clarity (““a nipple’s tender fault’’) and campy humor (”” “En,’ shrieked Nora, “garde!’ ‘’). But 1976’s ““Book of Ephraim’’ (part one of ““Sandover’’) begins recounting the parlor Ouija-board experiments he and lifelong companion David Jackson dabbled with – until something seized control ““As when a pike/Strikes.’'
The spirits who speak to them include Plato, W. H. Auden and the angel Gabriel; they gossip (Mozart is now a black rock star), warn of Armageddon, promise redemption. What distinguishes this from lunacy is Merrill’s undiminished technical mastery, and his sense of how loony it is: ““Atlantis, UFOs, God’s chosen apes – /Nobody can transfigure junk like that.’’ Merrill’s last book, ““A Scattering of Salts,’’ to be published next month, includes one last bit of cosmic comedy. Via the Ouija, a favorite spirit claims to be reincarnated as an 8-year-old, sets up a rendezvous – and stands him up. Merrill never fully believed or disbelieved his revelations; in this he was like most of us. But he did transfigure the junk he was given. And we don’t have to believe in anything but art to know that he still lives.
