The Changing Light at Sandover



The Changing Light at Sandover is a 560-page epic poem by James Merrill (1926–1995). Sometimes described as a postmodern apocalyptic epic, the poem was published in three separate installments between 1976 and 1980, and in its entirety in 1982. Already established in the 1970s among the finest poets of his generation, Merrill made a surprising detour when he began incorporating occult messages into his work.

With his partner David Jackson, Merrill spent more than 20 years transcribing supernatural communications during séances using a ouija board. In 1976, Merrill published his first ouija board narrative cycle, with a poem for each of the letters A through Z, calling it The Book of Ephraim. (The Book of Ephraim appeared as part of the 1976 collection Divine Comedies, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977.)

In 1976 Merrill believed he had exhausted the inspiration provided by the ouija board. The supernatural spirits thought otherwise, however, ordering Merrill to write and publish further installments, Mirabell: Books of Number in 1978 (which received the National Book Award for Poetry in 1979) followed by Scripts for the Pageant in 1980. The complete three-volume work, with a brief additional coda, appeared as The Changing Light at Sandover in 1982.

In live readings, Merrill was able to impersonate the narrating voices of (deceased) poet W. H. Auden and late friends Maya Deren and Maria Mitsotáki. He also claimed to give voice to otherworldly spirits including a first century Jew named Ephraim, and Mirabell (a ouija board guide).

Writer Alison Lurie, a longtime friend of Merrill and Jackson, described the creative genesis of the poem in her memoir Familiar Spirits (2001).