Resistance to the Message

ames Merrill's entree into another world, as well as his occult epic The Changing Light at Sandover, began as a casual parlor game in the early 1950s-probably an alternative to hearts or charades. As the poem tells us, an early transcript of these exchanges with the Ouija dated October 1953 is discovered, significantly enough, lodged in a copy of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of Blake. And in such playful origins, Merrill was knocking at the Blakean "parlor of whose inner sight / Demons and prophets thronged, Princedoms and Thrones, / Exchanging views with him" (178). These first ventures were conducted on a Parker Brothers board given by a friend with David Jackson-who was to become Merrill's longtime partner-and Jackson's wife at the time, Doris Sewell (McClatchy 24). Later, as the game became more serious, a larger, homemade board replaced the store-bought one, and a willowware cup presented an elegant substitute for the plastic planchette. From early on, Jackson (or "DJ") was the "hand," meaning that he kept his right hand on the cup as it skimmed across the board, and that he presumably had the psychic gift. Merrill (or "JM") served as scribe, taking the board's dictation while resting his left hand on the cup. As he recalls in "The Book of Ephraim," Here, there, swift handle pointing, letter upon Letter taken down blind by my free handAt best so clumsily, those early sessions Break off into guesswork, paraphrase. Too much went whizzing past. We were too nice To pause, divide the alphabetical Gibberish into words and sentences. (7)