Familiar Spirits: A Memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson

Knopf has begun republishing the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill, widely considered one of the leading American poets of the 20th century. The first title on tap, Collected Poems, is a lavish, 885-page volume that spans Merrill's 50-year career, documenting the evolution of an artist. The book contains the whole of Merrill's published…