... sincerity is a suspect commodity. He shows how Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Frank Bidart, Frank O’Hara, and Louise Glück get away with it, and even Language School poets have a go at it. Reena Sastri’s James Merrill: Knowing Innocence demonstrates that when it comes to innocence—sincerity’s...

... instead links Crusoe’s remark in “Crusoe in England” about his homemade flute (“I think it had the weirdest scale on earth”) and James Merrill’s remark it prompted about Bishop’s fondness for “juggling relative sizes” with David Kalstone’s observation that Bishop’s poems reflect “an effort...

... as witnesses for the prosecution. v Voices, Privacy, Landscapes Nick Halpern’s Everyday and Prophetic: The Poetry of Lowell, Ammons, Merrill, and Rich (Wisconsin) fails to use the word ‘‘interrogate’’ even once, and I cannot recall any talk about any poet’s ‘‘project It is that sort of first book...

...- decker also gets more limelight than usual, thanks to Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place. Evans Lansing Smith’s James Merrill: Postmodern Magus and an article guarantee Merrill’s customary spot, but some poets regularly featured are not represented, and only one “since...

... which might ceaselessly engage the question of human finitude.” The heart of Nicholls’s essay is an in-depth analysis of the poetic use of embedded quotation in the first section of “Of Being Numerous.” iv  James Merrill and John Ashbery Timothy Materer’s “Mirrored Lives: Elizabeth Bishop...

... put up on a table for auction as a slave. A number of studies of that play appeared this year and last, and I feared duplication. But thankfully Lisa Merrill’s “ ‘May She Read Liberty in Your Eyes Beecher, Boucicault, and the Representation and Display of Antebellum Women’s Racially...

... Poetry: Since the 1940s ix  James Merrill and Philip Levine In “Swann’s Way. Basic Training’: Interpretation in James Merrill’s Late Collections and À la recherche du temps perdu” (CL 61: 400–15) Chris- topher K. Coffman uncovers the intertextual presence of Proustian concerns and motifs...

... in its involvement with literature, is Richard J. Schrader’s The Hoo- sier House: Bobbs-Merrill and Its Predecessors, 1850–1985: A Documentary Volume (DLB 291). Quick, name an important Bobbs-Merrill author. Hoosiers and specialists in times faded from memory might be able to identify...

.... Was this Elizabeth Bishop a hitherto unknown young poet who happened to have the same name as the poet who died in 1979? Had Elizabeth Bishop been in touch with Quinn from beyond, like Auden with James Merrill at his Ouija board? Then there is the mat- ter of Quinn’s title, borrowed from one of the poems...

..., the ill-bred upstart against whose insolence defenders of the old order like Myra Henshawe are powerless. Several essays identify Cather’s ‘‘Southern Connections’’ through com- parison of her novels with works by her contemporaries. Merrill Maguire Skaggs in ‘‘The Interlocking Works of Willa Cather...

...: Positioning The Professor’s House’’ (pp. 55–68) compares St. Peter’s polar- izing of science and religion to Henry Adams’s vision of history created by the opposing powers of the Virgin and the Dynamo. Merrill Maguire Skaggs, in ‘‘Cather and the Father of History’’ (pp. 80–88), documents...

..., ‘‘antipa- thetic to any kind of general or essentialist postulation and Spicer (read in the context of Freud and Lacan) are particularly recommended. In anticipation of the publication of James Merrill’s collected poems early next year, Timothy Materer’s James Merrill’s Apocalypse (Cornell...

... Merrill works to recuperate, if not quite exonerate, Rus- sian symbolist author Fedor Sologub from the long-standing charge of plagiarizing Hawthorne’s “The Snow Image” for his own short story “Snegurochka” (“Snow Maiden While the stories have nearly identi- cal plots, Sologub “changes much...

... and the Lilac Sea: Why Bad Women Wear Flowers,” pp. 147–68) compares the significance of flowers in film noir, Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and Georgia O’Keeffe’s canvases. Focusing on James Merrill, Andrea Mari- ani (“ ‘Orbits of Power’: Gli anelli in James Merrill,” pp. 189–228) notes that the poet...

... and performance stand as the basis of Lisa Merrill’s “ ‘May She Read Liberty in Your Eyes Beecher, Boucicault, and the Representation and Display of Antebellum Women’s Racially Indeterminate Bodies” (   JDTC 26, ii: 127–44). Merrill offers a lively analysis of the conflict between abolitionist Henry Ward...

... Cohen, Lara Langer, 63–64 Caterine, Darryl V., 277, 305 Cohen, Matt, 205 Cella, Matthew J. C., 223 Cohen, Michael C., 64 Cerulli, Anthony, 25 Cohen, Paula Marantz, 97 Cervenak, Sarah Jane, 397 Cole, Merrill, 503 Chacòn, Heather, 243–44 Cole...

... religious discourse is inscribed in the strange fractures that are Cather’s modernist version of sotto voce.” As this last comment suggests, Ferraro is another in the long line of critics (Merrill Maguire Skaggs led the way in her After the World Broke in Two [1990]) who focus on the novel’s...

... by the journey. I do not think Ricks would be miffed. He urges us to read Hill, Hecht, and Lowell “whether or not under the sign of Eliot and Pound.” Frank J. Kearful 405 iii  Last Looks, Last Books Helen Vendler’s Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill (Princeton) invokes...

..., 395, 412 Davis, Todd, 368 Cole, Merrill, 283, 386 Davison, Sarah, 158 Cole, Sarah, 166–67 Dawes, James, 526 Coleman, Cheryl D., 326 Dawidziak, Mark, 304, 305 Cologne-Brookes, Gavin, 329 Dawson, Jon Falsarella, 278, 327 Coltelli, Laura...

..., 395, 412 Davis, Todd, 368 Cole, Merrill, 283, 386 Davison, Sarah, 158 Cole, Sarah, 166–67 Dawes, James, 526 Coleman, Cheryl D., 326 Dawidziak, Mark, 304, 305 Cologne-Brookes, Gavin, 329 Dawson, Jon Falsarella, 278, 327 Coltelli, Laura...