SOURCE: “Chronicles of Love and Loss,” in New York Review of Books, Vol. XLII, No. 8, May 11, 1995, pp. 46-51.

In the following review of Merrill's final poetry collection, Vendler investigates the retrospective verse of A Scattering of Salts.

James Merrill, who died on February 6 of this year, gave his last volume the title A Scattering of Salts. In such a phrase there are overtones of tears, savors, and fragrances, yet with a clear implication, too, that these astringent crystals are scattered at intervals in the diffuse and oceanic medium of life. Merrill, for all the poignancy of his work, was a comic poet in the line of Pope and Byron and Auden; and from the very beginning of his long career, the poems he published combined, in sparkling ways, suffering and joy.

The son of the financier Charles E. Merrill of Merrill, Lynch, he spent his life after Lawrenceville...