Recitative: Prose.

James Merrill.

ISBN 10: 0865472556 / ISBN 13: 9780865472556

Published by North Point Press, San Francisco, CA, 1986

About this Item

First Edition Thus [1986]; unstated. Very Good+ in Wraps: binding square and secure; text clean. Shows a tiny dot at bottom edge [NOT a remainder mark, but a local bookseller's method of distinguishing used books from the new stock]; faint smudges at outside edges; backstrip very lightly sunned, though titles thereon remain bright and legibility remains unimpaired; mild rubbing; binding square and secure; text clean. Remains a handsome copy. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. 202pp. Edited by J.D. McClatchy. Trade Paperback. Though Merrill sees prose as "a mildly nightmarish medium, to which there is no end ," Recitative reminds us that this poet can nevertheless write appealing prose on a wide range of subjects. The selections, spanning 40 years, are collected under four topics. "Writing" includes autobiographical essays and interviews conducted by David Kalstone, Donald Sheehan, and Ashley Brown, among others. "Writers" includes Merrill's views of Dante, informed by the experience of producing his own epic - the Sandover trilogyand Elizabeth Bishop - whose humanity he admires. "Occasions" includes several unusual smaller piecesfor instance, an essay on Corot. The volume ends with three short stories not readily available.

Seller Inventory # 37915

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Recitative: Prose.
• Publisher: North Point Press, San Francisco, CA
• Publication Date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0865472556
• ISBN 13: 9780865472556
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: McClatchy, J. D.
• Edition: First Edition Thus [1986]; unstated.
• Seller catalogs:
  • Prose & Criticism

About this title

Synopsis

Book by Merrill, James Ingram

From Publishers Weekly

From this collection of interviews, essays, travel notes, stories, appreciations and addresses we learn something of Merrill's early years and the influences on himDante, of course, and Stevens, Yeats, Cavafy and Bishop, to name a few. But more important is the oblique light Merrill's prose style casts on the closed, intimate structure of his lyrics. He is like a musician who has switched instruments, from clavier, say, to piano. If the temperament and many of the mannerisms are the same, the technique allows us to feel more at home with the writer since chat is the province of prose, not poetry. While many prose collections by poets seem flat-footed and somehow beside the point, this book is particularly effective, despite a ragbag exterior, as a key to the author's poetry. It is not quite correct to say merely that Merrill writes prose like a poet. Rather he bends the medium in mysterious ways to serve more than one purpose.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.