daily post | The Gad About Town

Texts from Beyond

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Mark Aldrich

The poet and critic John Greening sums up the career of James Merrill, who died twenty years ago tomorrow, in a 2010 essay, “Ouija”:

James Merrill made a point of breaking all the rules, of remaining recklessly formal when all about him were casting off their chains, of being incorrigibly discursive and elitist, shunning the rhythms of speech for something more refinedly musical, and unswerving in his determination to squeeze every last pun out of a line.—John Greening, “Ouija,” The Dark Horse, Summer 2010

He was a rebel in his adherence to rules in a rule-breaking era. He wrote dazzling, perfect poems and employed almost every verse form available to him, as an actor might use accents. Greening quotes George Bradley: “Reading James Merrill is enough to make the rest of us suspect we’re not smart enough to write poetry.” Even at his smartest, he is engaging and not impenetrable. His pleasure in the sounds of words and the poetic effects he creates and his many puns are always evident. He compliments his readers in assuming that we must know what he is writing about at least as well as he.

He is not the poet of nature as much as a poet who will describe a beautiful painting of a natural scene. (In “A Renewal,” a park that he and his beloved are sitting in is rendered as, “A clear vase of dry leaves vibrating on and on.”) American poetry loves its confessional writers, its Beats and its bards like Whitman and Sandburg and Ginsburg, but Merrill made a lifelong project out of reminding us that the life of the mind takes one down a road no less winding that any western blue highway. And he found a way to be a bard, nonetheless.
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An Offer Like This Will Just Not Come Again

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Mark Aldrich

According to NPR, by 1990 the city of Verona, Italy, was receiving over 6,000 letters to Juliet Capulet each year. This fact has been celebrated in a book and movie, both titled “Letters to Juliet,” so the outline of the story is well-known: Lovers who are in the middle of difficult plights or terrible loneliness write letters, detailed letters, about their storm-tossed affairs to Shakespeare’s fictional heroine. Only she, many begin, the ghost of a character who never breathed a human breath, only she can possibly understand and empathize.

Verona has a staff of volunteers who read and sometimes reply to the letters. (“Letters from Juliet” might be a more interesting title.) They call themselves “The Juliet Club,” and it only became an official office around 1990, but people have been writing letters to poor dead (never lived) Juliet for centuries. (Here is the address: Club di Giulietta, via Galilei 3-37133, Verona, ITALY.) Verona enjoys portraying itself as the hometown of Romeo and Juliet and even has a “Romeo and Juliet tour.” (Valentine’s Day is especially important.) Shakespeare certainly did more for Verona’s economy than he did for Denmark’s.
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‘A Renewal’: You’ll Know When You Know

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Mark Aldrich

To have love, one must give love; to give love, one must have it to give. That may be life’s deepest catch-22, Hobson’s choice, Morton’s fork—any of those logical situations whose suppositions exist only to support the logic that requires them. Love is illogical, or at least has its own logic; “How Will I Know?” pretty well sums it up. My mother (it is her birthday today) would have replied to Ms. Houston: “You’ll know when you know.”

The moment love is not pursued, there it is; advice to a young lover often follows that logic. “When you stop looking for it or needing it, you will find love.” (It only took about three decades of hearing that for it to sink in for me, which reminds me that it is Valentine’s Day soon.)
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