Scripts for the Pageant Author:James Merrill Merrill organized each section of the trilogy to reflect a different component of their homemade Ouija board. The twenty-six sections of "The Book of Ephraim" correspond to the board's A to Z alphabet, the ten sections of Mirabell: Books of Number correspond to the board's numbering from zero to nine, and the three secti... more »ons of Scripts for the Pageant ("Yes," "&," and "No") correspond to the board's Yes & No. The progression of poems also represents a kind of celestial hierarchy, with each book representing communication with a higher order of spirits than the one before. Humans in the poem are identified by their initials—DJ and JM; spirits speak in all capitals. By the time Merrill transcribed the lessons of the archangels in book three, he offered nothing less than a model of the universe. "Were such information conveyed to us by a carnival 'spiritual adviser,' we could dismiss it as mere nonsense," observed Fred Moramarco in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "but as it comes from a poet of Merrill's extraordinary poetic and intellectual gifts, we sit up and take notice." .... By the time Scripts for the Pageant ends, Merrill has made clear his vision of the self as a story that unfolds over time.« less