At college I'd seen my dead frog's limbs twitch under some applied stimulus or other - seen, but hadn't believed. Didn't dream of thinking beyond or around what I saw.

When Merrill was 16 years old his father collected his short stories and poems and publiJames Merrilld them as a surprise under the name Jim's Book. Merrill's partner of more than four decades was David Jackson a writer and artist. Initially pleased Merrill would later regard the precocious book as an embarrassment.

Although most of his publiJames Merrilld work was poetry he also wrote essays fiction and plays. James Ingram Merrill (March 3 1926 – February 6 1995) was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1977) for Divine Comedies.