A House, A Home, A Muse: The James Merrill House Cultivates The Next Generation Of Writers

By BEN JOHNSON
Day Staff Writer, Arts/Music Reporter
Published by The Day on 9/27/2005

Jason Zuzga listened to tapes of "Don Quixote" on his drive from Tucson, Ariz., to Stonington Borough. When the 32-year-old got to the James Merrill House on Sept. 8, where he will spend the next 11 months writing, reading, and exploring the coast, Jason walked down to the Water Street Café for a cup of clam chowder. Then he strolled down to the Point with his boyfriend Rob. Then he went to sleep.

The next day, Zuzga dropped the Cervantes book on tape and picked up Merrill's memoir.

"A Different Person," tells stories about various odds and ends that sit in the two-floor apartment where the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet wrote and lived for many summers. A woven trinket of Mexican beads. A group of pebbles painted like Charlie Brown. These are the non-literary pieces of Merrill that remain, enjoyed by the various writers in residence who are chosen annually to work and live in the poet's largely unchanged space.

"What's amazing is the apartment feels so homey and welcoming," says Zuzga, who deferred a doctoral writing program at the University of Pennsylvania for the Merrill program. "It doesn't feel like a museum. It's a place that is clearly meant to be lived in."

When Merrill died in 1995, he left his building on Water Street to the Stonington Village Improvement Association. Merrill asked that his close friend Raymond Izbicki be allowed to live on the second floor for as long as he wanted, with the revenue from the Village Barber and Hungry Palette shops on the first floor going to Izbicki, who is now 84, until he passed away.

But for his apartment on the third and fourth floors, Merrill left no instructions.

"I was the president of the SVIA at the point that James Merrill died," says Stonington resident Sylvia Lynch. "It wasn't really explained at all, and no one had heard him talk about why he left it to us. But he loved Stonington, and he loved the kind of simple small town-ness of it. He loved that a barbershop was in his building. This is all guessing, but I think that he left it to us to sort of protect what was there."

Members of the SVIA, including Lynch and writer J.D. McClatchy, decided that the best way to maintain Merrill's spirit in Stonington was to honor his generosity and cultural contribution to the village, so his apartment is offered free of charge to various writers who might find the space and community productive. All that is asked in return is that the writers give a reading or lecture at the Stonington Library, and that they try to interact with the community, as Merrill once did. A nominating committee, a Merrill House board of trustees, and the SVIA share the work of running and maintaining the program and the building.

"He was the center for a lot of intellectual, amusing, clever, fun, exciting people who would come and visit him," says Lynch, who has served on the Merrill board and the SVIA. "People were drawn to him, I think, and he was very generous in a quiet way, because he had family money. He would give it to people, who were working on books or music. He kept the rents low in his building to help people out."

James Merrill was born in 1926, the son of Charles E. Merrill, who was one of the founders of the brokerage firm Merrill Lynch & Co. The writer went to Amherst College and taught at several prestigious schools for a short period of time. His family's wealth allowed Merrill to live a charmed life, and he spent a lot of time traveling, keeping houses in Athens and Key West as well as his apartment in Stonington.

Since the writers in residence program started in 1995, 12 writers and scholars have spent at least part of an academic year living in the apartment. Tenants have ranged from a studier of ancient maps to a philosopher. There are no specific prerequisites for being nominated to live at the Merrill house. The writers don't have to be published extensively, although usually they are noticed for their work or by word of mouth.

The tenant doesn't receive any money from the program, and so has to fend for him or herself. Zuzga, for example, is teaching an online writing course for middle-school-aged students in order to put food on the table.

Zuzga, who writes both prose and poetry, hasn't thought too much about exactly what he will write over the coming months. He's mostly exploring the apartment at this point, from the bookcase that actually is a secret passageway to Merrill's study, to the upper deck overlooking the beautiful Stonington harbor. In the tower dining room, a vaulted ceiling and chandelier hang over the table where Merrill and his companion David Jackson would stay up late with their Ouija board attempting to contact spirits — a pastime that is the subject of Merrill's famous poem "The Changing Light at Sandover."

"I picture this place being sort of full of friendly ghosts," says Zuzga, "full of the people that Merrill knew and the ghosts he himself was living with."

While he's not planning out the great American epic poem, Zuzga does have some plans, and an intriguing direction as a writer.

"I'm interested in the idea of a reality poem, like reality TV," he says.

For one of his recent pieces, Zuzga videotaped four friends making butter by shaking a jar of cream. He then organized their verbal reactions as text on the page, creating a poem with their exclamations.

One of Zuzga's biggest goals is keeping poetry alive as an art form, and mixing old world process with new world technology is part of his plan for doing so.

"I want to figure out ways that poetry can compete with contemporary media and subversively use television and things to create poetry," he says.

This year, the young writer hopes to do an after school class at Stonington High School, as well as several lectures and readings at Stonington Library. He's also entertaining ideas of forming a writers group.

The lack of financial support does make it difficult for some of the starving artists who are chosen to spend time there.

"It's not as easy for a writer to come and find an inexpensive place to live in the borough as it was 50 years ago," says Lyn Callahan, who is co-chair of the Merrill House Committee. And we think it's important to preserve a place where writers can come and be part of the community.”

Callahan hopes that one day the SVIA and Merrill House Committee will be able to give a living stipend to writers in residence, but for now they've got some of their own financial difficulties. The Merrill family and other supporters have been generous in helping to support the program over the years, but the annual cost of maintaining the building is somewhere around $45,000, including taxes, upkeep and other expenses. Callahan says that until Izbicki no longer uses the second floor apartment, there will be no revenue from the building, which is a dangerous way to hold property in a town where property taxes are quite high.

"I do think at some point we will rely on income from the building to help fund the program," she says. "But Ray is very important to us, and some of the decisions we've made have been with his well-being in mind. What we're doing is from the heart. It's never a cold financial decision."