The Changing Light at Sandover: With the Stage Adaptation, Voices from Sandover

by James Merrill and Jane Verrell

Book Overview

This story is set in the period of history 1824-1884 - 60 years. We follow the journey of four lads who meet on the steps of King Edward's School, Bath. Their lives take unexpected turns, however, the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375711740
• ISBN13: 9780375711749
• Release Date: August 2011
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A sample

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 leavesAnd ponder turnings taken by our lives. Look at each other closely, as friends willOn parting. This is not farewell, Not now. But something in the sadEnd-of-season light remains unsaid.

The Modern Epic

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.

An Utterly Singular Experience

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.

Plato, Dante, Milton, Yeates and now Merrill

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.