It’s All by Someone Else
It’s All by Someone Else
This chapter takes on the trope of the poet’s voice, via James Merrill’s monumental poem The Changing Light at Sandover, which incorporates large swaths of voices from beyond the grave, dictated to him through the Ouija board. The argument is that by channeling composite, occult voices, Merrill’s experiment results in a sustained dismantling of a lyric voice. Sandover makes manifest the language of possession, animism, and ventriloquism shadowing modern theoretical approaches to poetic voice: as something physical, given breath and sound by the poet or reader; as a metaphor for an author’s distinctive style; or as a reductionist cliché equivalent to the self. In so doing, Sandover confounds any normative grasp of the voice in modern poetry while substantiating the uncanny truths on which the chronic enigma of poetic voice depends.
Keywords: poetic voice, James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover, Maya Deren, Ouija board, ventriloquism
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
