James Merrill, Collected Poems

Collected Poems by James Merrill


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
"Always the black swan moves on the lake; always
The blond child stands to gaze
As the tall emblem pivots and rides out
To the opposite side, always. The child upon
The bank, hands full of difficult marvels, stays
Forever to cry aloud
In anguish: I love the black swan."

with Merrill, I initially preferred his early book, "the Black Swan", probably a symptom of my own less sophisticated tastes. His later work is urbane and witty, and has surprised me with each rereading. One word or one phrase suddenly reveals the underside of the thing. The series of poems entitled "Peter", for instance, are both clever and painful. The introduction to the book is good and includes some Merrill quotes such as "...he once told an interviewer, he 'looked for English in its billiard-table sense--words that have been set spinning against their own gravity.'" The Collected Poems is my most thumbed through book of poetry and I'm very frustrated that I wasn't able to find it in hardcover as I've destroyed it already.


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Well, the happy news is a new review by Literary Nymphs, who gave "No Rest for the Wicked" five nymphs and a lovely review

The unhappy news is the Droid is dead.

moment of silence, please.

Here is what I learned. + =

I feel like I'm stranded on a desert island without my Droidie.

Poor Benton (dog) freaked when a squirrel ran in front of him. I was yammering away on the phone whilst walking Benton. Benton lunged and the leash and my arm went one way, Droidie went the other and into possibly the only puddle in the San Fernando Valley. blub blub blub.

Poor Droidie can't swim. Who knew?

On behalf of the silent and sane majority

I called my Senators' offices today and thanked them.

I'm sure the nutcases threatening congressional members are far less representative of the American people than one might gather from Yahoo and Fox. And I think it's fairly obvious why frustrated and overpowered Republican Congress-people would say things like "the American people are angry" when they have no evidence to support that assertion. Well, except the crazy (and illegal) actions of a few psychos.

But I wanted both of my Senators, and my local Rep, whose offices I also called, to hear it from me. The news hasn't shown the face of one happy American, I told the people who answered my call. This is me telling you there are a lot of us. We just aren't throwing bricks.

a review on "No Rest"

Val at Obsidian Book shelf posted a very nice review of No Rest for the Wicked

my new book trailer

My trailer for "No Rest for the Wicked"

No Rest for the Wicked

ISBN: 978-1-60737-546-3

Cover Artist: Justin James buy link here: http://www.loose-id.com/No-Rest-for-the-Wicked.aspx

NO REST FOR THE WICKED is now available from Loose id.

This is my sequel to 'Immortality is the Suck'. I heard the cries of readers and explored Adam and Peter's relationship a little more.

The blurb: Adam has gone through a lot of changes in the past year, a new taste for 'O' neg blood and allergy to sunlight being the least of them. Maybe it's the cute young grad student who has been sniffing around Adam's longtime sex partner, Peter. Or maybe immortality gives a man a little too much time to think. But Adam's feeling motivated to change a few of his ways. If he could just get Peter to stop working long enough to notice.

Peter has his own issues with dating a dead man. And after over a decade of being in love with a commitment-phobe, he's finding it hard to believe that Adam isn't sampling the goods of the hot young vampire he works with.

They manage their issues the way they always have. By not talking about them...until a high profile computer software genius turns up drained in Hollywood, revealing a new vampire gang in Los Angeles, and all of their troubles come to a head. There's no rest for the wicked.