Last Poems

Thornwillow Press is proud to present this collection of the last poems James Merrill finished before his death, published here for the first time. James Merrill, who once declined to become poet laureate, was always the laureate of poets. His untimely death in 1995 at the age of sixty-eight left a tragic void among those who knew and loved him. J. D. McClatchy, long time friend of Merrill, himself an eminent poet and editor of the Yale Review, writes in his introduction that each of these seven poems begins “with a sensation… a sense of possibility” that moves the reader through a “collage of circumstances” and “towards some larger idea of itself.” Last Poems is letterpress printed directly from the type on handmade paper created for this volume. The frontispiece contains a hand-printed photogravure portrait of James Merrill by Mariana Cook. The copies are bound in tan Moroccan goatskin and handmade paste-paper, and are presented in a velvet-lined traycase. The edition is limited to 185 copies and is signed by Mariana Cook, J. D. McClatchy, and the publisher.