A great American poet - winner of every major prize America can offer its poets, from the Pulitzer to the Bollingen - opens his life to us in a memoir that puts wit, sensibility, and elegance of mind to the service of unflinching autobiographical truth. The memoir's central thread is Merrill's thirty-month sojourn in Europe. A youth of twenty-four, born to comfort and privilege, and now at a crossroads, he sets sail in 1950, with a young man's passionate expectations. Having sold his first book of poems, having recently met ("or so I thought") the love of his life, yet beginning to feel constrained by his social circles, and seeing no way into the next phase of his life, he envisions himself returning from his travels "a different person." His vivid stories of encounters across Europe - with friends and lovers, with great cities, with great works of art, with opera, with psychoanalysis, with artists and aristocrats - are followed by postscripts reaching back to childhood and forward towards the present and the person he is. His memoir enthralls as a revelation of a poet's life, as a portrayal of the complexities that bind a son to his parents, and as perhaps the most lucid and inward account we have had of a homosexual life in a world of intellect and art. A fascinating work. A literary event. $25. LIT As much a storyteller as a poet, Merrill, the Pulitzer Prize-winning heir to the Merrill-Lynch fortune, delights with this graceful account of a 30-month stay in Europe in the 1950s that was to become the pivotal time of exploration and self-discovery. In his mid-twenties, after having his first book of poems published, Merrill and the "love of his life" depart for Greece and Italy. When the passion disappears, Merrill stays on, attending concerts, meeting and entertaining friends, undergoing psychoanalysis, and, most importantly, writing poetry. His narrative style is so flowing that the account reads more like a novel than a memoir. With refreshing honesty and perception, Merrill introduces us to a young man full of self-doubt, incredible ego, and a large capacity for human kindness. Most libraries with poetry collections will want this. Because of its wonderful sense of immediacy and story, it is also recommended for libraries serving avid biography readers. This fall, Knopf is also issuing paperback editions of The Changing Light at Sandover: A Poem, originally published in 1982 and reprinted in hardcover in 1992, and Selected Poems, 1946-1985, published in 1992.--Ed. - Denise Sticha, Carnegie Lib. of Pittsburgh Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.