"Self-Portrait in a Tyvek Windbreaker"

Item

Merrill, James. 1991. “‘Self-Portrait in a Tyvek Windbreaker’”. Series_IV_Manuscripts, James Merrill: Life and Archive, accessed February 11, 2026, https://digitalexhibits.library.wustl.edu/s/james-merrill-life-and-archive/item/38518

Title: "Self-Portrait in a Tyvek Windbreaker"
Description: Holograph and typescript fragments toward and three full drafts of "Self-Portrait in a Tyvek Windbreaker." A play on John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," and published in A Scattering of Salts, it is one of the longest poems of Merrill's later years and one of the strongest from any phase of his career. "...it is concerned not with personal memory, but with the present and the future of our culture."
Subject: Merrill, James, 1926-1995
Creator: Merrill, James
Source: James Merrill Papers (MSS083) - Box 138, Folder 3537
Date: 1991: August 23
Relation: Series_IV_Manuscripts; Exhibit Cases 9-10: Love and Death; James Merrill: Life and Art, pp. 749-51
Format: 8 leaves. Recto and verso.; 16 jpegs. 600 dpi.
Language: English
Type: Manuscript
Rights Holder: Washington University in St. Louis
Rights: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Identifier: MSS083_IV_1_a_Poems_Self_Portrait_in_Tyvek_Windbreaker_001.jpg
MSS083_IV_1_a_Poems_Self_Portrait_in_Tyvek_Windbreaker_002.jpg
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Item sets: Merrill; Merrill Life Archive

Site pages: Love and Death - Manuscripts

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