Word: ouija
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...centerpiece of Divine Comedies (1976), James Merrill's last book of poetry, was a 90-page narrative that turned a parlor game into a trip through the first circles of the supernatural. The Book of Ephraim recounted how Merrill and his friend David Jackson used a Ouija board to contact Ephraim, a witty Greek Jew born in A.D. 8; it then followed the two-way conversations that ensued over the next 20 years. This device gave the added ballast of history to Merrill's already established lyric and autobiographical skills; Ephraim's was the spirit...
Mirabell: Books of Number takes what began as a baroque saga and amplifies it to an epic. The new book again offers Merrill, Jackson and a Ouija board. The place is their house in Stonington, Conn., the time the summer of 1976. Ephraim reappears, although vastly overshadowed by the band of dark creatures urgently seeking the poet's attention. They are the fallen angels, now reduced to minding the machinery set in motion by God, whom they call Biology. As the enspirited cup moves among the capital letters on the Ouija board, their plea is spelled out: FIND...
...travel, how he should live. Despite the omnipresence of this Orwellian machinery, many practices of the feudal past are observed. In the privacy of their homes, there are many peasant families who still pray to Kuan-yin, the goddess of mercy, and burn incense to their ancestors. Ouija boards are regularly consulted to foretell the future. On the communes, matchmakers arrange marriages and would-be bridegrooms pay traditional bride prices, although now with a socialist tinge: an industrious girl who earns many work points (on which salaries in communes are based) brings a better price than a more indolent maiden...
...departed spirit. A dog's howl seems to him a sign that he has been heard, though a more objective observer might imagine the hound to be the world's first furry movie critic. A little later there is a candlelit attempt to summon Dean via ouija board, which spills over into a raid on a lover's lane to frighten non believing neckers into joining the mourning. The girl who most deeply shares Jimmy J.'s excessive regard for Dean is horribly burned when the candle she is carrying ignites her costume...
...have become the galley slaves of capitalism. Without them, the nation's banks would be buried under the blizzard of 35 billion checks that rain down on them annually, and economists trying to project the growth of the nation's $2 trillion economy might as well use Ouija boards. In the airline industry, computers make it possible to reserve a seat on a jumbo jet, pay for it by credit card, and enable the plane itself to fly. In many industries, computers design the products the companies sell. Automakers, for example, use computers to view a prospective...