Water Street (poems)

Water Street (1962) is a volume of poems by the American poet James Merrill. It takes its title from the main commercial street of the Borough of Stonington, Connecticut, where he made his home.

In the introduction to the volume, Sandy McClatchy and Stephen Yenser write:

Merrill believed, with Marcel Proust, that the only true paradise is a lost paradise. Love is not fully itself until it is lost, until it becomes memory, then becomes art.

Merrill pays homage to Marcel Proust in one of gems, poem “For Proust”. The volume also contains poems “An Urban Convalescence” and “Swimming by Night”, that have been widely praised by literary critics.