[MGSA-L] Talk on James Merrill and the Greeks at Brown University

[Amanatidou, Elissavet]

*The Program in Modern Greek Studies*

*The Department of Comparative Literature &*

*The Department of English*



*Present*



Langdon Hammer





*James Merrill: “Greece, Greek, and the Greeks”*



Langdon Hammer’s *James Merrill: Life and Art*, a critical biography, was
published by Knopf in April 2015. Merrill was born to high privilege and
high expectations as the son of Charles Merrill, the charismatic co-founder
of Merrill Lynch, and Hellen Ingram, a muse, ally, and antagonist
throughout her son’s life. Wounded by his parents’ bitter divorce, he was
the child of a broken home, looking for repair in poetry and love. This is
the story of a young man escaping, yet also reenacting, the energies and
obsessions of those powerful parents. It is the story of a gay man
inventing his identity against the grain of American society during the
eras of the closet, gay liberation, and AIDS. It is the story of a wry
occultist talking with spirits by means of a Ouija board. In this story of
a brilliantly gifted, fiercely dedicated poet working every day to turn his
life into art, Greece, Greek, and the Greeks also play a significant part.

Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 5:30pm

Brian Room, Maddock Alumni Center,

38 Brown St


*Book Signing and Reception to follow*

*Langdon Hammer is Professor of English & English Department Chair at Yale
University, where he teaches and writes about modern and contemporary
poetry. **While writing James Merrill, he edited two volumes for the
Library of America—The Collected Poems of May Swenson (2013), the first
collected edition of Swenson’s work, and Hart Crane: Complete Poetry and
Selected Letters (2006). His first book, Hart Crane and Allen Tate:
Janus-Faced Modernism, was published by Princeton University Press in 1993,
was named a “Breakthrough Break in Literary Modernism” by Lingua Franca. In
a sequel to it, using correspondence collected by Brom Weber, Crane’s first
editor, he introduced, selected, and edited an enlarged and authoritative
volume of Crane’s letters called O My Land, My Friends: The Selected
Letters of Hart Crane (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1997).  *



-- 


*Elsa AmanatidouSenior Lecturer, Department of ClassicsWilbour Hall, 102 A*





*Brown UniversityProvidence, RI 02912t: 401.863.7482f: 401.863.2551*
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