Ouija? Heavenly messengers? Their appearance will not surprise readers of Merrill's Divine Comedies (1976). In that work, the poet told of bizarre communications that he and his companion, David Jackson, had received over a 20-year period from "Ephraim"—a 1st-century Hellenistic Jew who claimed to have been a slave at the court of Tiberius….

Through him,… JM and DJ were able to contact dead friends, in particular two quasi-parental figures: W. H. Auden, Merrill's poetic mentor, and Maria Mitsotáki, whom Merrill once addressed as "the Muse of my offdays" (The Firescreen, 1969). Such a high comic romp was rather startling after the previous "chronicles of love and loss." Still, it was undeniable that in shaking the burdens of nostalgia and regret, the poet's voice deepened with impressive authority.

Now it turns out that "The Book of Ephraim" was merely a curtain-raiser for Mirabell's more solemn masque. Mysterious powers...