Volume 32, Number 14 · September 26, 1985
Playing with Fire
By Brad Leithauser
Late Settings
by James Merrill
Atheneum, 87 pp., $6.95 (paper)
A handsome book with a quietly ominous title, James Merrill's Late Settings arrives two and a half years after the simultaneous publication of The Changing Light at Sandover, his epic excursion into, among other things, the occult, and From the First Nine: Poems 1946–1976. The new title—unlike the two preceding, with their suggestions of variation and continuance—strikes a terminal note appropriate to final volumes; judged purely by its title, Late Settings might be set beside Auden's last book of verse (Thank You, Fog), or Sissman's (Hello, Darkness), or Roethke's (The Far Field). And the book's brief opening poem, 'Grass,' offers a meditation on mortality in which the poet predicts only 'ten more years—fifteen?' for himself. The 'grass' of the poem is the stuff of lawns as well as the stuff of (drug) dreams, and the poem hovers between the burying earth and a heavenascendant smoke. 'Grass' is immediately followed by the longer 'Clearing the Title,' which vacillates as well, its thoughts of a new life in the Florida Keys tempered by reflections on old age and death.
Review, 2877 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |