Michael, thanks for a much more discerning look at Vendler's review than I gave it. I was puzzled by her calling Merrill a comic poet, and I looked in vain for an explanation of what she could mean; you must be right that she's simply indulging the "either... or" fallacy. However, I was pleased that she looked at a couple of poems, or bits of poems, in considerable detail. That's something critics rarely do, either for lack of space or lack of the ability to focus that closely. In APR, for example, the reviews and criticisms seem to be their own little prose poems that riff on the verse ostensibly under discussion. But let's not get started on APR.
Richard
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