SOURCE: Kirsch, Adam. “All That Glitters.” New Republic 224 (7 May 2001): 40.

In the following review, Kirsch compares James Merrill's Collected Poems to Lurie's Familiar Spirits.

Proust's Madeleine has become the popular shorthand for his novel, the Atlantis of memory resurfacing after a single taste of a cookie dipped in tea. In fact, Proust's metaphor for remembering is much more arduous:

I place in position before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed. … Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss.

It is...