James Merrill's "The Octopus"

"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 Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe