James Merrill's "The Octopus"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

"A master of forms, Merrill’s later poetry rarely feels formal. In the Atlantic Monthly, poet X.J. Kennedy observed that “Merrill never sprawls, never flails about, never strikes postures. Intuitively he knows that, as Yeats once pointed out, in poetry, ‘all that is personal soon rots; it must be packed in ice or salt.’”

-via Poetry Foundation

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. Today's poem is by James Merrill, and it's called The Octopus. Merrill was a gifted formalist poet, lyric poet, who used a lot of traditional verse forms in his
0:24.7	early career. But his career sort of divides into two parts. And in the latter, half, he
0:32.7	took an odd turn and became fascinated with the occult and produced a large body of poetry,
0:44.8	some of which was reputedly written with the use of a Ouija board. I love James Merrill,
0:52.1	but he got weird. This poem comes from the first half of his career,
0:59.7	or he's sort of making the transition away from strict formalist verse towards blank verse and then
1:10.4	a free verse.
1:12.6	And I'll admit that there are some days when I think I know what this poem is about or means.
1:19.5	And other days when I'm not so sure, I will try and channel the former experience as I read the poem, offer a few comments,
1:29.8	and then read it one more time.
1:32.3	The Octopus.
1:36.3	There are many monsters that a glass and surface restrains, and none more sinister than vision asleep in the eyes' tight translucence.
1:48.3	Rarely it seeks how to unloose its diamonds, having divined how drab a prison the purest mortal
1:55.9	tissue is, rarely it wakes. Unless, coaxed out by lustre is extraordinary,
2:03.6	like the octopus from the gloom of his tank,
2:06.5	half swimming, half drifting, toward anything fair,
2:10.5	a handkerchief where a child's face swimming near the glass,
2:14.3	the writher advances in a godlike wreath of his own wrath. Chilled by the fragile reeling,
2:21.1	a hundred blows of a boot heel could not quell. Vision awoke and hungered. Percussive pulses where it
2:29.0	clung to its cage brought close drums loud and transmit, volutions of a Hindu dance.
2:36.1	I am willing to undergo the volition and fervor of many flesh-like arms,
2:41.9	observe these in their holiness of indirection, destroy, adore, evolve, reject,
	...

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