David Noyes Jackson (September 16, 1922 – July 13, 2001) was the life partner of poet James Merrill (1926–1995).
Life
A writer and artist, Jackson is remembered today primarily for his literary collaboration with Merrill. The two men met in May 1953 in New York City, after a performance of Merrill's play, "The Bait." They shared homes in Stonington, Connecticut,[1]Key West, Florida, and Athens, Greece. "It was, I often thought, the happiest marriage I knew," wrote Alison Lurie,[citation needed] who got to know both men in the 1950s and thought enough of the relationship to write a memoir about it more than forty years later, Familiar Spirits (2001).
Over the course of decades conducting séances with a Ouija board, Merrill and Jackson took down supernatural transcriptions and messages from otherworldly entities. Merrill's and Jackson's ouija transcriptions were first published in verse form in The Book of Ephraim (printed for the first time in Divine Comedies, 1976, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1977).
He and James Merrill are buried side by side at Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington. Jackson's former wife and Merrill's friend, Doris Sewell Jackson is buried behind them.
Gallery
James Merrill and David Jackson House, Key West, Florida
Jackson and Merrill graves, Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington, Connecticut
