SOURCE: “Merrill,” in Poetries of America: Essays on the Relation of Character to Style, edited by Daniel Albright, University Press of Virginia, 1989, pp. 192-206.

In the following essay, Ehrenpreis analyzes The Book of Ephraim, Mirabell, and Scripts for the Pageant as a related “three-part enterprise.”

Anyone who wants evidence that James Merrill has held on to his formidable gifts as a poet should look at a few sections of his recent books, Mirabell: Books of Number (1978) and Scripts for the Pageant (1980). Merrill's versatility and inventiveness fill a description of the small town of Stonington, Connecticut, on Block Island Sound:

White or white-trimmed canary clapboard homes Set in the rustling shade of monochromes; Lighthouse and clock tower, Village Green and neat Roseblush factory which makes, upstreet, Exactly what, one once knew but forgets— Something of plastic found in luncheonettes; The Sound's quick sapphire that each day recurs Aflock with...