The Changing Light at Sandover

In The Changing Light at Sandover (1982), James Merrill, previously a polished lyric poet, made his mandarin style the vehicle of a lighthearted personal epic, in which he, with the help of a Ouija board, called up the shades of all his dead friends, including the…

… (1980)—a trilogy later published in The Changing Light at Sandover (1982)—established Merrill as one of the leading American poets of his generation. This 17,000-line work presents a series of conversations held with various real and fictional persons in the spirit world by means of a Ouija board, a device that…