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In James Merrill’s Letters, a Workshop and a Stage for the Poet’s Wit James Merrill found that letters suited him better than essays. Quick literary judgments became an epistolary specialty.Credit.The New London Day Buy Book ▾ By Thomas Mallon A WHOLE WORLD Edited by Langdon Hammer and Stephen Yenser When he was 25 and traveling abroad, the poet James Merrill (1926-95) learned that his mother had destroyed letters he’d been sent from several different men, fearing that they presented her son with a “threat of exposure.” Recounting this incident in “A Different Person” (1993), his too-little-known autobiography, Merrill pointed out how “it never occurred to the alarmists that a person who made no secret of his life was a sorry target for blackmail.” As years passed and his romantic activity remained forthright and far-flung, his mother became, for the most part, “forbearance itself.” She is one of her son’s many co

New yorkUnited statesCharles merrillStephen yenserCharlese merrillSylvia plathElizabeth bishopMarianne mooreJames merrillRose macaulayDavid kalstoneDaryl hineAagha shahid aliShahid aliDavid jacksonPeter hooten