Merrill's task in ordering, condensing, and presenting [a] welter of material, under the gun of urgency and haste, staggers the imagination; who else could have done what he did half so well? (pp. 14-15)

Whatever Mirabell's shortcomings may ultimately be judged to be, they are not metrical; Merrill's versification is the best there is….

If dark but benevolent powers spoke to you, asking for POEMS OF SCIENCE to save the world, what would you do? I wish I thought nobody would dismiss as a garrulous eccentricity a book that is in sober truth a marvel; one might as readily dismiss Dante, whose chief advantage was that the whole civilized western world believed in his vision without having shared it literally. For Dante the question of belief never arose; for Merrill it arises continually if allowed to. Merrill himself is healthy and sane, and he is nobody's fool...