Customer Reviews

The Changing Light at Sandover: A Poem

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There was a lot of attention given to Merrill when his Collected Poems came out, so I went out and read it. (The fact that I hadn't heard of him before should indicate that I don't read a lot of modern poetry). What was astonishing was how effortlessly the poems read, how thoroughly Merrill had mastered the technical aspects of the craft. The poems read as smoothly as prose, but line after line stayed in the memory - and when you went back you realized what a complex and subtle rhyme scheme many of the poems had.

But for some reason, there was a lot I could admire but very little I could love. They didn't just feel like exercises in style, but there was something too cool and smooth about their surface: there wasn't enough humanity in them.

The same isn't true of The Changing Light at Sandover. Don't be put off by the Ouija stuff: the heart of this poem isn't some sort of half-baked spiritualism, but simply the relationship between two people that love each other - the poet and David Jackson.

Let me quote a line from The Book of Ephraim that I memorized without trying, just from reading it a few times. The same technical mastery is there, but now there's something alive in them. Enough of the other reviews tell you what the poem is about, so here's a sample of how beautiful this strange masterpiece can be in its smallest details:

We take long walks through the turning leaves
And ponder turnings taken by our lives.

Look at each other closely, as friends will
On parting. This is not farewell,

Not now. But something in the sad
End-of-season light remains unsaid.

How can I start a review of the book that captured me into poetry? that led me to actually read and enjoy Dante and Milton? that even led me to reading odd epic poems and novels in verse that rarely make it into the top million rank here on Amazon?

How about "Great book - a life-changer in wholly unexpected ways."

I got my copy gratis back when I was doing occasional book reviews of the more traditional sort and not the slightest bit interested in the slender wisps of poetry that crossed my desk. There was something different about this one, though. This was five pounds of poetry ! Five-hundred and sixty pages ? One poem? How could that be? WHAT could that be?

But you've got to decide whether to spend a few bucks here, your situation is different. So the real question is what brought YOU to this page in Amazon. Needless to say, my five-star rating means that I will try to convince all comers to read "Sandover", but you must realize that you are a rather lonely explorer to have come this far. Your path reveals the nature of your search.

Maybe you've read some of Merrill's other work from the recent, rather successful "Collected Poems". Wonderful! While the critics can tell you about commonalties in all those poems, you probably noticed more of the vast range in that collection: from the tiny, surgically incisive "Little Fallacy", to the weirdly evocative "Lost in Translation" (bet you read that one more than once), to the extended, languorous narrative of "The Summer People", to the challenging and often enigmatic mythos in "From the Cupola."

This wholly different last pair, my favorites, were unexpectedly conjoined as the only two poems in the UK-published early book entitled "Two Poems." Together, they hint best at what "Sandover" will deliver: carefully crafted narrative and delight in poetic form along with intellectually challenging and sometimes cryptic layering. Expect some strangeness wrapped in a reassuring pale, cream cape, until the cape is tossed back to reveal a startlingly, spookily omni-dimensional vision. Sounds like fun ? Jump in...

I guess it's possible that you came here after reading Alison Lurie's recent lurid little "literary memoir." If so, congratulations for stepping over that indelicate little pile to consider the man's most epic work, instead of a shrewish listing of his peccadilloes. Of course personality and autobiography inevitably fuel poetry, and Merrill's "Sandover" is no exception. You might even, legitimately wonder, as I did, how the poetry of a rich gay man, who sounds suspiciously like an aesthete of the flightiest sort in Lurie (and apparently had a weird, mystic streak) can do anything more than entertain you. And how is that possible for 560 pages ?

You won't find the glib and thoughtless dilettante of Lurie's portrayal lurking beneath "Sandover." Merrill was not an overtly autobiographical poet, but he collected the pieces and wrote the tale of Sandover through 20-odd years of his life, In doing so he revealed the reality of privilege without arrogance, mysticism within a wry skepticism, and appreciation of love and beauty in all their forms. "Sandover" is actually a fine place for one who is neither gay, nor rich, nor mystical and, perhaps, like me, aesthetically-challenged, to get drawn-in to a world that twines these elements together in an endlessly interesting and attractive way. If you've read Lurie, I think you will find "Sandover" an especial pleasure - a much more graciously framed journey toward much more extraordinary horizons.

I suppose you might be here because you have developed a taste for the long poem: the epic or the novel in verse (maybe from my own `listmania' list of such works right here on Amazon). If so, you face a more interesting challenge. "Sandover" will offer many things that are familiar but probably some quite different. If the story in Vikram Seth's "Golden Gate" captivated you, you will find a quite compelling story here - but not one quite so down-to-earth. If the different cultures circumscribed by Walcott's "Omeros" or even Budbill's "Judevine" intrigued you, you will find other worlds here - otherworldly locales, indeed.. If Merwin's "Folding Cliffs" satisfied while it challenged you as a reader, you will find "Sandover" to be a surprising combination of the eminently readable and the multi-layered and re-readable. If Dante's, Milton's or even Frederick Turner's epic reach inspired you, you can count on "Sandover" to take you to the inner and outer reaches of the universe.

Finally, of course, you might be here just because you've heard that James Merrill was one of the finest poets of the 20th century. He was. In "Sandover" he combined many, many talents - as a formalist and as an experimenter in form and as one of the last poets to show a pure delight in words and their infective enlodgement in the human brain. The atomics of the poem satisfy and surprise no matter what magnification your readerly microscope is set on. Over and over you will find yourself startled at a just plain perfect piece of short verse - as tersely powerful as William's "red wheelbarrow." Then you will find yourself so captured by the narrative of the story, that only part-way through will you realize that you are in the midst of two pages of elegant "terza rima." Even the largest structural elements partition, loop-back and break off in ways that build a magnificent whole that is as captivating in its large-scale structure as in its single word choices.

Sandover is an endlessly captivating work - I've read it, all 560 pages, four times in ten years, and still pick it up and read a section or two every few months.

I wrote my thesis on this book, so I know it well. On the first read I didn't get it at all. By the third, I adored it. Perfect for anyone who wants to work HARD for a great reward. (those of you who are brilliant won't have to work so hard). Merrill is as strong a logician as he is a poet. Everything works on a hundred levels. Those of you H. Bloom types (mystics as well as intellects as well as academians) will find this epic is the Inferno/ Paradise Lost of the late 20th Century. If we lived in a slower society, if those in our time didn't have the attention span of the avg. commercial, this poem would shape current thoughts about philosophy and religion. This poem will offend (JM believes gay men are the most evolved). JM is a park ave snob whose sense of elitism is not of the wallet, (despite his lineage as the son of Charles ie Merrill Lynch) his elitism is of the mind (or soul as he says). Nevertheless, he takes on every brilliant mystic from Plato to Yeates, and if you enjoy that type of dialogue, his modern contribution to the disscussion is well worth reading.

After checking out Divine Comedies at the library and reading a few chapters of The Book of Ephraim, I knew I was willing to read the entire epic of The Changing Light at Sandover. Nearly six months later, after having read and reread Ephraim, Mirabell, Scripts and the Coda (the four sections of Merrill's magnum opus) I am ready to pass judgement. This epic is great but probably not GREAT. It requires a very heavy investment from the reader, not unlike Dante's Divine Comedy, or Joyce's later work. This investment pays dividends, but not the astronomical sort that one hopes when one is flipping through an opera dictionary, trying to discover Merrill's point.

Sandover is full of allusions, contradictions, and virtoso poetry, the latter being why I highly recommend it. As the other reviews tell you here, Merrill, elitist that he is, has not made the work accessible. Which is fine. So here is my short list of writers to be familiar with before you read it: Dante, Homer, Auden, Pound, Eliot, Proust, Wagner, Merrill's earlier work, Blake and Yeats. I also highly recommend Robert Polito's A Reader's Guide to The Changing Light at Sandover, which is more of a handy index followed by a compilation of reviews (including Bloom's and Vendler's) than say, a line-by-line explication of the sort available for Pound's Cantos. Thankfully, The Changing Light at Sandover does not require that.

The Book of Ephraim stands alone and whether you like it will probably be the best gauge of whether you will like the whole of Sandover. Mirabell I found very difficult going and, in all honesty can probably be skipped, like most people skip Purgatorio. Scripts for the Pageant is much more fun and The Higher Keys is really of a piece with it, tying up the loose threads. For all my pessimism, this really is the best modern epic I've found, a thousand times better than The Waste Land or Blake's prophetic works, or even Milton's Paradise Lost. The poetry and storytelling are so overwhelmingly confident that, once you have assimilated the scattered references, it is easy to get carried away. Large questions of free will, life after death and the nature of love are tackled with wit and sincerity. I'm glad I bought it and have it on my bookshelf. Since I put in the sweat, it is now a treasure-box I can open at any time.

The Changing Light at Sandover is Merrill's magnum opus. It is also the greatest example of epic poetry in modern literature. Divided into four sections (four being a mystical number [seasons, elements, etc] and possibly alluding also to Eliot's "Four Quartets"), Sandover, is, as far as I am aware, the longest single poem in the modern cannon. Yet length alone is not what qualifies this as an epic poem. Like all true epic poetry, it borrows heavily from its classical predecessors, so Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton and even Tasso are alluded to throughout the poem.

The method behind the poem is fairly well known, and is in fact included in the poem's narrative. Merrill and his life-partner, David Jackson, would ritualistically cleanse themselves for a stipulated period, then consult the spirit-world by means of an Ouija Board. Merrill served as a kind of amanuensis, taking dictation from spirits from another dimension and translating the messages into poetry.

Merrill has been branded as an elitist by some, and there is no getting around the fact that he did consider himself and his partner as members of an order higher than that of most of mankind. He believed in a quasi-Gnostic hierarchy, wherein human beings are ranked according to their spiritual development. Unfortunately, the belief system he invokes leans more closely to Third Reich mysticism than to Buddhism or Hinduism. A great many people, according to Merrill's tenets, don't even have souls. They exist only on an animal level. One can see where this sort of thinking can, and has led.

I don`t want to infer, however, that Merrill, or this work, are in any manner political or polemical. This is a true work of art, full of imagination and of ideas. The sheer scope of creativity on display in "Sandhurst" is unsurpassed in the past 100 years of poetry, with the possible exception of "The Waste Land." It should be read and studied (and hopefully, cherished) by all lovers of literature. Whether or not Merrill existed on a higher plane than most of us is certainly debatable, even questionable. Whether or not his excursions into other spiritual realms were "real" or were delusional is also debatable. What is not debatable, is the fact that he produced a remarkable and very important poem in the process.

James Merrill's extraordinary poem is surely one of the most remarkable and distinctive literary accomplishments of the 20th Century (though there are many, most in acadamia, whou would disagree). Yes, it is very strange and ocassionaly obscure. But it is, after all, a narrative poem and not nearly as difficult as some claim.

Most and best of all, however, it is a work of which one seems to never tire. After 10 years, this reader still finds it utterly fresh and its meaning and relevance ever more personal and touching. No 20th Century poet was as astounding as Merrill at his flashiest, and very few are as sincerely moving.

Like Wagner's Ring Cycle (a major metaphor and touchstone of the poem), it is the sheer scope and brillance of author's imagination that ultimately thrills the reader the most. And in that respect, even in its darkest, most alarming moments, it is a hugely positve and life affirming work.

This is a very large book comprised of one long poem. I lugged it through airports with me one summer on vacation, often reading it on the beach and every now and then, inexplicably (because I am not usually an emotional person) bursting into tears. The premise is that poet James Merrill (winner of the Pulitzer prize) and his partner use a homemade Ouija board to contact spirits. What they discover--all recounted in gutsy, challenging verse--never ceases to amaze. It seems that much like the physical world, the spirit one also evolves. This contracted language, fun to decode, (IF U C WHT I MEAN) anticipates internet chatroom-speak. The scope of the work is epic, and it is built on faith--both in the power of words to create a better world, and in a vibrant life hereafter. On the beach, my partner turns to me and asks why I'm crying. I look up from THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER to reply, "I don't know. I guess because it's all just so damn beautiful."

I wrote my thesis on the American long poem, and "The Changing Light at Sandover" was part of my reading. I read A LOT for this project. But of all those other books of poetry, this one stayed with me the most. More than his relationship with David Jackson, it's about the nature of human relationships and relationships with people we don't even know but FEEL like we know (ex. Auden's presence). It's long, it's difficult, but it has some of the most powerful moments I've found in modern poetry, and, like with a long novel, one sinks deeply into Merrill's world and words.

First of all I felt somewhat intimidated when it came to starting this epic work. I was afraid that my own background might prove inadequate for a product of such ethereal literary heights. It came as a relief when I found that I was well enough read to appreciate the majority of the literary and cultural references (at least I believe that I did.) Part of this was no doubt due to what I brought to the work, but equally part was due to the poet's uncanny ability to draw you in and connect you with the most intimate and obscure reference. I actually felt like I belonged to the circle- that I might be able to hold my own in such august company. This company included not only the poet, his partner, and their friends, but also the supposed spirits of Plato, Pythagoras, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens, W.B. Yeats, Maya Deven, W.H. Auden, and even more.

So much for the exquisite and impressive poetic and literary aspect of the epic- the metaphysical basis was a another matter. Here I felt more than adequate. It is reported that Merrill and his partner styled themselves as metaphysical adepts. Indeed they drew the old criticism of being "spiritual elitists." Frankly, I do not sense that they were such. Such individuals exist, but they do not naively and uncritically seek out contact with the lower astral plane via ouija board. They do not take at face value the identities and messages of the beings so contacted. True, this may provide "interesting" material for the poet to run with, but it is of dubious value otherwise. In fact, some of the specific information (such as no souls escaping Hiroshima) just sounds plain wrong. As for three billion dead in the immediate future, or Mohammed being the servant of the Adversary and destined to bring about the last holy war, well, I'll let you judge for yourself. There is also something about treating the subject of spiritual patrons and the pattern of the wallpaper with seemingly equal weight in the poem that is somewhat disconcerting...

Just the fact that multiple "characters" reveal in the course of the poem that they are not who they originally said that they were (sometimes for decades) should tell you how much credence you should place in anything that they have revealed.

What irritates me is that some would equate this work with William Blake's. Yes, it is a remarkable work of art, an exquisite poem, but it is not Revelation. You have about an equal amount of gems and dross in a most impressive setting. However, it is up to you to judge which is which. You see, a true poet-prophet (such as Blake or Dante or Milton) rely on their own direct, intuitive connection with the Divine, and not upon a secondary entity to contact the Essence that will impart true immortality to their work. But then again, as far as I know, the poet himself never claimed that this was anything more than a most skilled riff of poetic art. It is indeed that.

The stage adaptation is included in the back of this volume. It is my humble recommendation that you read it first in order to make the main poem a little more accessible.

One furthur note, the "God B" refered to so often here is obviously the Demiurge- Yaltabaoth.


"Now the archon (ruler) who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas ("fool"), and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, `I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come."
---Apocryphon of John, circa 200AD

I remember getting a copy of "Divine Comedies" for my birthday as a youngster and being intrigued by the story of "Ephraim," and hearing about two people, JM and DJ, communicating with the dead through a Ouija board, The book has a list of Dramatis Personae that captivated me, for among them were some of my favorite artists like Maya Deren and W H Auden, together with some family relations and celebrities whom I did not know, enough to fill a whole novel. I suppose that Merrill knew he was onto a good thing, for he came back a few years later with a whole magnum opus about these characters and more... Then years later with a book of "Scripts for the Pageant," really milking out the story for all it was worth, in beautiful cascades of verse both lyrical and coruscating--and much of it actual dictations from a heavenly place.

I wasn't sure how much to believe of the back story, or how deeply to believe in the revelations of the divine that DJ and JM were getting through the Ouija. But at one point I was convinced that Merrill was the greatest poet writing in English. Today I think that he was the wealthiest poet writing in English, and all that implies. I know I wanted, like him, to have a fabulous life and know all these famous writers and legends, to move between Venice and Greece and Connecticut (later to Florida) with a different circle of adepts in each location--and to speak to the dead was the icing on the cake, a byproduct surely of charm and, you know, just being open to it. How many Ouija boards did my pals and I wear out, hardly ever getting anything except when I, well, cheated. Although one time this guy called "Ray" came on and claimed that Bobby Kennedy was going to be assassinated. But that had happened ten years before Ray's appearance, so we speculated that poor "Ray" was locked in a black hole or time warp like the characters in Rocky Horror, and that he, whom we suspected was the French writer "Ray" Radiguet, the beloved of Cocteau, could be set free if we all wrote poems about him.

I can't really separate the way I used to feel about Merrill's mastery of form and image, with the picture of his money. Master anthologist J.D. McClatchy (and Stephen Yenser, a poet whom I have praised in the past) have produced a new edition of Sandower, free of the errors that had plagued previous editions. As the book proceeds we get more and more of those small caps that signify dead people speaking--then it gets more tedious, though many will disagree, especially those who think the voices are bringing wisdom beyond the realm of the human. I often wonder what Scientologists make of James Merrill. Perhaps instead of making that ill-advised movie of L Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth some years ago, John Travolta might have instead done a film version of The Changing Light at Sandover--would have been perfect when Merchant and Ivory were both still alive. I would have Travolta as JM, Tom Cruise as DJ, Priscilla Presley as Maya Deren, Angela Bassett as Erzulie, Sir Anthony Hopkins as Pythagoras, that guy from The History Boys as Auden, Penelope Cruz as Maria Mitsotaki, and Robert Morse (the actor) as Robert Morse whoever he was in real life. I think a young Arnold Scharzenegger might have done a fine, delicate job as Hans. Tom Wilkinson as Robert Lowell? Patti LuPone as Maria Callas? No--Katey Sagal.