It is hard to know where Merrill will go from here-whether he will set himself to a Proustian remembering and give us more vignettes of the past or whether some new convulsion of life will wreck the fine equilibrium by which, in this book, the four racing winds are held and viewed. Helen Vendler teaches at Boston University and is the author of books on Yeats and Wallace Stevens. I expect minerals never do. Enough for them was a feast Of flaws, the molten start and glacial sleep, The parting kiss. Sparkling comes easy to the Gemini.
Centimeters deep yawns the abyss.